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NewsMaterial4 min readDisconfirmAI Editorial

University of Utah Chief AI Officer: Sovereignty Is a Knob, Not a Switch

In an interview, Manish Parashar, Chief AI Officer at the University of Utah, argues that operational sovereignty for institutional AI infrastructure is not a binary choice between openness and closure, but rather the ability to dynamically adjust security levels based on specific research projects. Using the Redtail supercomputer as an example, he illustrates how a hybrid architecture can migrate open research into independent facilities, freeing up capacity in previously restricted environments to enable differentiated control over different workloads.

2026-11-06 01:35 GMT+8

Researchers often face an apparent contradiction: they must ensure the security of sensitive data while allowing results to serve society as openly as possible. If this contradiction is treated as a switch—either fully open or fully closed—it is indeed difficult to manage. The alternative approach proposed by Manish Parashar, Chief AI Officer at the University of Utah, is to treat it as a knob: having the capability to turn this knob becomes critically important.

In an interview with theCUBE’s Sovereign AI series, Parashar stated, "In research, we are always trying to balance research security with doing open research for societal good." Depending on what you are working on, you may need to lean toward one end or the other. He further emphasized, "We don’t want everything tightly controlled, nor do we want everything completely open; we want to ensure we have the ability to right-size it depending on what we are working on."

How does this knob turn in practice? The University of Utah’s Redtail AI supercomputer provides a concrete scenario. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) helped architect and deploy this turnkey system, but daily operations are managed entirely by the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing—admin access, resource allocation, user onboarding, monitoring optimization, and capacity adjustments are all handled internally by the university. Parashar describes this system using five dimensions of sovereignty: territorial, legal, technological, operational, and financial. The university retains operational and legal responsibilities, while funding relies on partnerships with the state government and donors.

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At the infrastructure level, Parashar explicitly stated that he does not pursue a single physical location: "Our overall ecosystem is hybrid, with on-premises deployments and cloud-hosted solutions; we always view it as a hybrid system, not requiring everything to be in one data center or within one state." This hybrid architecture is precisely the prerequisite for the knob to turn—if all computing were locked in one place, adjustment would be impossible.

The practical effect of turning the knob is reflected in capacity reallocation. The University of Utah’s existing restricted environments support sensitive and regulated research, including healthcare projects. With Redtail online, a significant amount of open research has moved to this new facility, thereby freeing up capacity in the original data centers used for regulated work. Parashar noted that the next step is entering facilities that possess not only capacity but also compliance with emerging regulatory controls, which is currently the focus. In other words, moving open research outward is itself an operational maneuver to create space for secure research.

Financial sustainability is key to whether this model can operate long-term. Parashar mentioned that expansion planning began before the Redtail contract was signed. The university is engaging federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to discuss investments in the existing ecosystem. Simultaneously, it is demonstrating value to the Utah state government to persuade them to invest, arguing that it benefits both the state and its citizens, while also reaching out to additional philanthropic donors. This diversified funding source is itself part of operational sovereignty—avoiding reliance on a single vendor or a single grant channel.

It should be noted that this discussion comes from an attribution statement by the head of an institution currently running this system, not an independently verified universal framework. The interview was recorded by theCUBE, sponsored by HPE. Although the disclosure explicitly states that HPE has no editorial control over the content, the choice of which dimensions to elaborate on regarding sovereignty, and how success is defined, may still carry a vendor perspective. While Parashar’s knob metaphor is conceptually clear, specific technical implementation details—which control points can be adjusted independently, how fine-grained the adjustment is, and how isolation is achieved between different research groups—are not elaborated upon in the interview. For readers, the value of this framework lies in providing a starting point for thought: when facing the tension between openness and security, first ask whether it can be made continuously adjustable, rather than being forced to make a one-time choice between two extremes.

Sources

  • siliconangle.comSiliconANGLE↗
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