Abstract ======= From a national security viewpoint, a higher degree of cyber autonomy is crucial to reduce the reliance on external, often times untrustworthy entities, in order to achieve better resilience against adversaries. To probe into the concept of government cyber autonomy, this study examines the external dependency of public-facing government websites across the world’s major industrialized, Group of Seven (G7) countries. Over a two-year period, we measured HTTPS adoption rates, the autonomy status of CAs, and the autonomy status of CPs on G7 government websites. We find that approximately 85% of web resources loaded by G7 government sites originate from the United States. By reviewing policy documents and surveying technicians who maintain government websites, we identify four significant forces that can influence the degree of a government’s autonomy, including government mandates on HTTPS adoption, website development outsourcing, the citizens’ fear of large-scale surveillance, and user confusion. Because a government websites are considered critical information infrastructures, we expect this study to raise awareness of their complex dependency, thereby reducing the risk of blindly trusting external entities when using critical government services.