And the public sector agencies least equipped to respond to that shift are often the ones with the most sensitive missions. For public sector and defense agencies, many of the nation’s most sensitive missions operate in disconnected, air-gapped environments where cloud-based AI services and continuous updates are not available. A critical challenge in a unique environmentThere is an assumption that air-gapped environments buy defenders time — they do not. Model sovereignty : Air-gapped environments exist for a reason, and that reason doesn’t evaporate because an AI vendor’s architecture assumes cloud access. In segmented public sector environments, this is not a performance optimization.