Technological Sovereignty at the Intersection of the Constitution, International Law, and the Brazilian Foreign Policy Agenda

Abstract

This article examines the technological sovereignty of the Brazilian state amid asymmetries of knowledge, infrastructure, and power that shape the geopolitics of innovation and challenge traditional categories of sovereignty. It aims to reconstruct this category in legal terms through the 1988 Constitution, international law, and their implications for Brazilian foreign policy, while distinguishing technological sovereignty from notions such as digital sovereignty and technological autarky. The study adopts a legal-normative and conceptual approach, connecting constitutional provisions on sovereignty, national development, intellectual property, science, technology and innovation, technological autonomy, and foreign relations with international rules, case law, domestic legislation, and internationalization initiatives discussed in the article. The findings indicate that technological sovereignty can be understood as an expression of economic sovereignty and as state agency, manifested in the powers to prescribe, adjudicate, and enforce decisions in the digital and technological realms. This formulation reveals a dual public-law dimension, domestic and external: internally, it guides science, technology and innovation policies, the protection of, and functional approach, to intellectual property rights, and the promotion of technological autonomy; internationally, it supports cooperation, innovation diplomacy, technology diffusion, and the activities of scientific and technological institutions abroad. The article concludes that this framework broadens the understanding of Brazil's room for action in the geopolitics of innovation without equating technological sovereignty with self-sufficiency or assuming the immediate overcoming of structural technological dependence.