Sovereign Cloud: Who Really Owns Your Infrastructure? • Jake Warner & Charles Humble

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted in May 2026.https://gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview here:https://gotopia.tech/articles/445Jake Warner - Co-Founder & CEO at Cycle  @JakeWarner  Charles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & ConsultantRESOURCESJakehttps://bsky.app/profile/jakewarner.comhttps://x.com/jakewarnerhttps://github.com/JakeWarnerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jakewarnerhttps://jakewarner.comCharleshttps://bsky.app/profile/charleshumble.bsky.socialhttps://linkedin.com/in/charleshumblehttps://mastodon.social/@charleshumblehttps://conissaunce.comDESCRIPTIONJake Warner, co-founder and CEO of Cycle.io, traces a pattern he's watched repeat itself since his OpenStack days: a new orchestration technology arrives, developers adopt it enthusiastically, it grows in complexity, and organizations eventually ask whether managing it is really a core competency. He made a decade-long bet that Kubernetes would follow the same arc — and built Cycle as the answer: a distributed control plane that lets companies own their own infrastructure and compute while still getting a clean, platform-like experience on top of it. The key design principle is a high ceiling without sacrificing simplicity — companies shouldn't have to re-platform every time they grow, and they shouldn't have to give up infrastructure ownership to get ease of use.The conversation then pivots to Sovereign Cloud, which Jake frames not as a niche regulatory concern but as a fundamental trust and ownership question. He draws attention to a risk many organizations underestimate: the control plane itself. Unlike many platforms where the control plane is a single point of failure and a blackbox, Cycle's architecture ensures that even if the control plane goes down, customer infrastructure keeps running — servers maintain their own manifests and restart containers independently. Looking ahead, Jake expects more regions and countries to build their own cloud equivalents, driven by privacy concerns, data residency laws, and geopolitical pressures that are accelerating faster than the technology is.His conclusion: the organizations that handed AWS all the keys are beginning to realize the cost — and the industry is correcting.RECOMMENDED BOOKSAlan Hamilton • Sovereign Cloud Operations • https://amzn.to/4dqYAe4Leonard J. Horta • The Cloud Exit Strategy • https://amzn.to/4dXqeiNCharles Curry & Tanessa Curry • Cooling the Cloud • https://amzn.to/4a0d4iALiz Rice • Container Security • https://amzn.to/3oU4iJeLiz Rice • Kubernetes Security • https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/kubernetes-security/9781492039075BlueskyInstagramLinkedInFacebookCHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUSJoin this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/joinLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!