Like the project of e-Estonia generally, the data embassy is part global PR, part technical solution. The narrative of the data embassy thus faces the inherent creative tension of e-Estonia between its futuristic post-national framing and national geopolitical imperatives it ultimately serves. Estonia's digital initiatives, on one hand, are meant to brand the country’s image as a prosperous and peaceful Nordic state that escaped the confines of the twentieth-century history, geography, and time and is ready to succeed in the 24/7 global economy. The framing of the data embassy thus partly draws upon the repertoires of the virtual, borderless, global, and post-national state: “an extension in the cloud of the Estonian government.” A the same time, the narrative of e-Estonia is meant to keep Estonia on the figurative and literal radars of the Euro-Atlantic world to protect the sovereign and bordered Estonian nation from its inescapable Russian neighbor in light of their tense relations in the post-Soviet era. Taavi Kotka, at the time Estonia’s Chief Information Officer, wrote in 2015 in reference to Russia’s incursion into Ukraine that the “[g]eopolitical turmoil in 2014 brought into stark relief the necessity of” the data embassy solution.
Data embassy branding, it seems, has been a success. Western media again have readily echoed Estonia's two-pronged message that celebrates the nation's digital ingenuity while highlighting security concerns. When the concept of data embassy first surfaces in 2015, Reuters reported: “With an eye on Russia, Estonia seeks security in computing cloud.”
