Contemporary governments are awash in quantification, as numbers and algorithms play an ever-greater role in public decision-making processes. In the field of defense and strategic policy, the development of armed conflict databases holds out the promise of improved predictive capacities and early warning systems. While this dynamic can be witnessed across a range of European countries, notably Germany and the Netherlands, it appears to be much less present in France. Diplomats and military personnel make only marginal use of the available databases, judged both inadequate in their own right and also ill-adapted to strategic analysis as such, which is held to be fundamentally dependent on qualitative sources. Together with the relatively limited training in quantitative methods offered to French diplomats and soldiers, a specific appreciation of the strategic environment also helps account for this national singularity. A general mistrust of the merits of quantitative approaches leads to a French weakness in the use of quantification that depends not only on cognitive frames but also on a will to protect digital sovereignty in the international realm.