Who's Leading the Digital World? Surprise—It's Estonia

On a crisp winter morning, a young woman sat at her kitchen table in Tallinn, Estonia, sipping coffee while finalizing her taxes online. In between sips, and it was just a few minutes from start to finish, she had finished filing her taxes—and happy that she didn’t have to put up with the hours-long queues that decades ago her parents had to endure.

The young woman is hypothetical, but according to Anna Maria Osula, a diplomat and expert in cybersecurity and digital governance at the Estonian embassy in Washington, the young woman’s experience in the digital world would be typical of what it’s like for the 1.3 million Estonians who are living in her country’s digitized world.

A Fully Digital Society

Estonia’s digital way of life is unparalleled. By 2025, Estonia has made all public services fully accessible online and has implemented numerous AI applications in the public sector. n Estonia, 99% of the tax returns are filed online. Citizens can securely vote online, register a business, even finalize a divorce with a few clicks. "I can take my phone, legally sign documents or pay a bill in 30 seconds," adds Osula.

Government services operate through the secure open-source X-Road system. This allows the decentralized databases to connect to one another. For a citizen, the services are accessible via a central portal, and this digitalization saves a typical citizen an estimated five days per year. The ease of digital interaction demonstrates to its citizens that their government is working for them and making life better. For the government, this mean reducing bureaucracy and cutting administrative costs.

There’s also a psychological aspect to it. "This digital lifestyle gives us more time to focus on things that matter—innovation, creativity, and economic growth," says Osula. In her view, it’s one of the factors responsible for Estonia having the highest number of startups per capita in Europe. In fact, Estonia is known as "Europe's Unicorn Capital" because of the number of billion-dollar startup companies per person. As of 2025 Estonia is home to ten unicorn companies.

Furthermore, for several decades now, Estonia has been sharing its knowledge and experience with countries in the region and globally. Estonia is also focused on advancing online and digital rights, which are crucial in today’s world. However, becoming accustomed to Estonia’s digital infrastructure comes with challenges. Digital infrastructure needs to be resilient and free from intrusion and sabotage. Osula doesn’t make accusations, but there has been a surge in undersea sabotage incidents, with the damage being frequent and systematic. There is a clear pattern, one that is difficult to consider as accidental or merely poor seamanship.

These undersea cable cuttings involve critical infrastructure such as undersea power lines, telecommunications cables, and gas pipelines. Repairing these can take weeks at a cost for each instance, in the millions of dollars. Adversaries appear to be probing and exploiting these weak points. Such threats pose a serious challenge not just for this region’s connectivity but also for national security and economic stability. Estonia, together with its allies, has been raising these concerns and their wider impact in different international fora.

Some in these fora hope that the European Union and NATO recognize these cable cuttings as acts of war, albeit within the realm of gray zone warfare. The hope is that the EU and NATO will respond with measures strong enough to achieve real deterrence. Ensuring the security of Estonia's digital lifeline is crucial, not just for the nation's own prosperity but as a model for how digital societies can thrive in the future. Let the world come together to ensure that this digital approach, which saves so much time and makes everything so much more convenient, doesn’t get undone by gray zone warfare.