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Keynote Panel: The Sovereign Stack: Nations, Enterprises & the Demand for Verifiable AI - Hugo Romero, AMD; Najwa Aaraj, TII; Mark Russinovich, Microsoft; Nelly Porter, Google; Mike Bursell, CCC
Tuesday June 23, 2026 11:15am - 11:45am PDT
Courtyard
Video Stream


The race to deploy AI agents has exposed a fundamental gap in what “sovereign AI” actually means. Localized hosting and domestic ownership are no longer enough for true sovereignty. As nations and enterprises deploy AI at scale across sensitive infrastructure and distributed systems, the question is no longer whether they want sovereign AI, but whether they can prove it. True sovereignty requires verifiable answers to four questions: what code ran, where it ran, who operated it, and what rules were enforced. This keynote panel convenes leaders across the full sovereign stack, including silicon, cloud, and frontier model labs, to examine why hardware-enforced verifiability has become the cornerstone of production-grade sovereign AI deployments. The conversation will explore how hyperscalers, frontier model labs, and sovereign platforms are shaping trusted AI infrastructure, and why Confidential AI is now the foundational layer for compliance, IP protection, governance, and verifiable sovereignty. Because without proof of sovereignty, you have nothing.
Moderators
avatar for Frederic Lardinois

Frederic Lardinois

Sr. Editor, AI, The New Stack

Speakers
avatar for Nelly Porter

Nelly Porter

Director of Product Management, GCP Confidential Computing and Encryption, Google

avatar for Mike Bursell

Mike Bursell

Executive Director, Confidential Computing Consortium
ike Bursell is the Executive Director of the Confidential Computing Consortium. He is one of the co-founders of the Enarx project (https://enarx.dev), and was CEO and co-founder of Profian, a start-up based on Enarx. He has previously served on the Governing Boards of the CCC and... Read More →
avatar for Mark Russinovich

Mark Russinovich

CTO, Deputy CISO and Technical Fellow, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft
Mark Russinovich is CTO, Deputy CISO, and Technical Fellow for Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s global enterprise-grade cloud platform. A widely recognized expert in distributed systems, operating systems and cybersecurity, Mark earned a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon... Read More →
avatar for Hugo Romero

Hugo Romero

Corporate Vice President, Product Security, AMD
Hugo Romero is Corporate Vice President of the Product Security Office at AMD, where he leads AMD’s end-to-end product security strategy across hardware and software. In this role, he drives security across SoC Security Architecture, Confidential Computing, Root of Trust, Security... Read More →
avatar for Dr. Najwa Aaraj

Dr. Najwa Aaraj

CEO, Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
Dr. Najwa Aaraj is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research pillar of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), the overarching advanced technology body in Abu Dhabi responsible for driving research and development... Read More →
Tuesday June 23, 2026 11:15am - 11:45am PDT
Courtyard
  Keynote Sessions

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