Technological advancement has long represented one of the most significant enabling tools that reshuffle the structure of international relations, as it influences the development of states’ abilities to coerce others, granting leading states a preferential advantage in reorganizing the hierarchy of international power and restructuring the rules, arrangements, and laws governing relations among international actors.
The new aspect this time is the delegation of machines and software to accomplish tasks that have been monopolized by humans throughout written history, particularly in the decision-making process regarding the use of force. Competitive research between states is taking place fiercely to develop intelligent systems credible in the realm of military force, from the battlefield operations conducted by soldiers to weapons of mass destruction.
This situation promises a change in the rules of the game, where a state’s status and power have historically been linked to several factors, most of which are geopolitical in nature, such as territory, geographic position, population size, topography, natural resources, economic power, and military strength, among others. Today, however, AI applications add a new dimension to the issue, shifting us from the fundamental geopolitical foundation of power to its geotechnological basis.
This shift could lead to a decline in the effectiveness and efficiency of the metrics we’ve relied upon to achieve global peace, as it ostensibly generates two trends detrimental to international stability: First, the pursuit by leading AI states to enhance their capabilities through integrating AI systems into their military arsenals out of fear of competitors’ advancements, as seen in the current competition between the United States and China. The second trend involves weaker aspiring nations attempting to compensate for their deficiencies in effective military systems by relying on AI applications, notably in military and economic contexts, as exemplified by Turkey, Iran, Israel, and similar countries.
AI will impact most traditional power forms for all categories and will enhance a state’s soft power through media monitoring algorithms and improving its reputation. Naturally, weapons of mass destruction will be augmented by AI systems for deterrent purposes or retaliation strikes, imposing new costs on the international community related to the moral and legal challenges concerning military and civilian uses of AI, including laws of war and personal data protection. We must also consider the implications of employing AI algorithms in cyber warfare for both offensive and defensive purposes.
AI could make a difference in forecasting and intelligence operations by analyzing patterns and uncovering relationships, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement in countering terrorism and organized crime. It will also affect the economic capabilities of states by increasing productivity and reducing scientific research durations; however, it simultaneously threatens job markets, reflecting on a nation’s internal stability and, consequently, its international standing. AI is likely to positively impact the abilities of transnational companies and negatively affect state capabilities, as these companies lead innovative projects in AI development, strengthening states’ dependence on them. In summary, we might witness the onset of an era of profound transformations in several familiar political concepts such as democracy, state sovereignty, privacy, and traditional power metrics, reshaping international relations.
This study presents a vision of AI’s diverse applications’ impact on international relations through a series of changes this technology will generate in the power hierarchy and the capabilities of international actors from individuals to states, alongside the emerging risks and new costs that may redefine human assumptions over the next fifty years.
First: Actors in the International Environment
The conflictual nature of international relations compels us to understand the hierarchy of international power and the units influencing these conflicts. Therefore, we enter the realm of the international system, defined by Morton Kaplan as “a set of interrelated variables distinct from its surrounding environment that are positioned to enable it to maintain itself in the face of environmental disturbances.” Anthony Downs characterizes it as “a model of power relations among international players capable of ensuring various activities according to a set of written and unwritten rules.” The system represents the will of major powers that can impose their will within this hierarchy and possess the capacity to coerce and influence the behavior of less powerful international units.
If we aimed to classify actors in the international environment, we could consider two main categories:
- Primary Actors:
- States
- International Organizations
- Secondary Actors:
- Non-Governmental Organizations
- Multinational Corporations
- Terrorist Forces
- National Liberation Movements
- Individuals
Second: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the International Power Hierarchy
If we were to identify keywords in international relations, we would find that the two most associated words are: interest and power, both central to the nature of relationships between states. Once states determine their interests and begin procedural operations to achieve these interests, they simultaneously prepare the material readiness that enables them to impose their will, even by force, to meet their objectives.
States do not hesitate to employ coercive procedures that affect the behavior of international players, striving continuously to maximize their strength and develop their capabilities so as not to fall under the influence of another power that could compel them to compromise their interests. The capacity of states has always been linked to the evolution of their power tools, which politicians use to achieve their goals. Thus, it is crucial to focus on the impact of AI on power tools as they represent the primary factor regulating relations among states. AI is expected to influence the international environment through several gateways, the most important of which are:
Emergence of New Risks in the International Environment: It is widely known that a variety of autonomous weapons operating with AI are being developed by several nations, such as drones, ships, torpedoes, and autonomous submarines controlled by algorithms. There is a risk of algorithmic bias, leading to these systems attacking unintended targets or impacting civilian areas or deploying weapons of mass destruction; this can occur through malicious software disrupting algorithms, where an algorithm could be statistically fair but ethically biased, turning civilians into military targets.
With the rise of autonomous weapons, the probability of war breaking out by mistake increases. These weapons could autonomously target adjacent forces or specific figures, particularly during tensions between states. The AI era also suggests a potential rise in casualties due to AI-driven weapons. Ultimately, the act of firing relates to situational assessments, the battlefield context, the type of threat, and psychological factors surrounding soldiers; however, autonomous weapons do not function this way but operate based on analysis and response. AI algorithms can escalate risks within states by facilitating cyberattacks meant to sabotage critical infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, redirect trains, or manipulate dam controls.
Changing Power Dynamics Among International Actors: While the state remains the primary actor in international relations, AI applications could alter the power balance between states and new actors, like multinational technology corporations. For instance, SpaceX’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict enabled Ukrainian naval forces to target several Russian vessels in the Black Sea fleet and sink some of them using drones. Additionally, AI will strengthen the individual’s position in the international environment, allowing states to utilize individual talents, computational strength, and data to design and produce AI applications that can meaningfully impact power. Even though these talented individuals are few in number, their influence surpasses national boundaries, whether due to their nationality or the nationality of their companies.
AI also changes the effectiveness of terrorist forces by enabling these applications for conducting attacks, reconnaissance, or sabotaging communications and infrastructure, thus enhancing their influence in the international environment and complicating the pursuit of these groups. Moreover, AI impacts international organizations by enhancing operational efficiency when utilizing AI applications, as it can improve the effectiveness of organizations tracking organized crime, analyzing terrorist behavior patterns, predicting disease outbreaks, or even using AI in climate engineering programs and creating green belts cultivated almost entirely by drones without human intervention, among other uses.
Ease of Producing Weapons of Mass Destruction: It is expected that AI will extend its impact to the production of weapons of mass destruction, being applicable to various activities involved in developing nuclear weapons, such as exploration, drilling, and mining, which can be carried out by robots, in addition to controlling enrichment phases and production lines. Deep learning systems could also offer new designs for nuclear arms; this is naturally simpler with chemical and biological weapons, as all stages from design to assembly and deployment could occur without human intervention through robots or autonomous systems.
Outbreak of an Arms Race in AI: Military and security systems in the 21st century are increasingly operating under AI-driven management, changing the nature of wars by relying on autonomous weapons. This trend is likely to spur an AI-driven arms race among multiple states this century, particularly between the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, and aspiring nations seeking to reposition themselves within the international power hierarchy. World leaders acknowledge the dangers and importance of AI; Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in 2017, “AI is the future not just for Russia, but for all humanity. Whoever becomes the leader in this field will rule the world.”
China has an ambitious plan to develop military capabilities backed by AI and has set a $150 billion AI industry target by 2030, alongside its contributions to international legal frameworks concerning AI usage. It is the first permanent UN Security Council member to propose a position paper detailing the ineffectiveness of current international laws regarding fully autonomous weapons. The United States leads advanced programs in AI research, neural networks, and brain-computer interfaces, enabling humans to control and operate machines via brain commands, improve combatants’ abilities, and monitor their psychological and physical states.
Rise of Unemployment and Threat to Stability: States are expected to be profoundly affected by AI’s impact on the labor market, with projections indicating that AI could replace 40-50% of current jobs in the next fifteen years. For instance, if banks replace their employees with accounting and auditing algorithms and lending management or if transportation companies replace their staff with autonomous vehicles (cars and ships), this would likely increase unemployment, particularly among individuals lacking skills compatible with AI-driven automation.
These developments could lead to economic and social disturbances, imposing new burdens on states whose ability to cope will significantly affect their standing and capabilities in global power dynamics. Some may become fragile states heavily reliant on external assistance. Such shifts in state power dynamics are broadly anticipated due to deep geopolitical and technical transformations, compounded by the economic aspect recognized by Kondratieff, which he described as cycles or civilizational waves spanning 40-60 years, accompanied by new technologies forming the foundation for a new economy and generating social, cultural, trade, and production changes shaping the dominant global power.
Emergence of AI Geography (Gio AI): The traditional standard for measuring state power relies on two kinds of geopolitical factors: relatively stable ones (like location, area, shape, topography, borders, population size, natural resources, economic capacities, and military capabilities) and changing factors (such as political systems, political parties, public opinion, interest groups, and ideology). Generally, the effectiveness and quality of changing factors are most crucial in the power equation; stable factors can be viewed as raw materials, while changing factors are the tools that transform them into capabilities.
Here, AI’s significance grows in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of all interacting elements. Consequently, a new standard more critical than stable factors will emerge, centered on possessing AI technologies that allow states to compensate for deficiencies in their stable geopolitical elements. For instance, states suffering from population decline can compensate for military workforce shortages with military robots and intelligent command and control systems, plus autonomous weapons across all categories.
States facing resource shortages can rely on AI technologies to address these gaps, as well as the exploratory and operational capabilities AI offers in challenging environments like the sea depths or extreme climatic regions. The same principle applies to human resources that can be supplemented with machines, emphasizing that the key isn’t simply the availability of resources, but the knowledge to utilize them efficiently. Therefore, smaller countries with limited populations can play larger global roles if they possess AI development and deployment capabilities, surpassing their traditional geopolitical metrics.
Heightened Importance of the Fifth Domain of War (Space): There is no doubt about the importance of air sovereignty in conducting military operations across other domains (land, maritime, cyberspace) due to the extensive coverage it provides for various activities. The higher the altitude achieved, the stronger the effects and the lower the risks, extending even to outer space. Given that maintaining human life becomes more challenging in this environment, robots take on this responsibility.
Today, aircraft, automated control systems, and unmanned flights are increasingly common. It is expected that the production of autonomous robotic space weapons will rise, ensuring the neutrality of military forces in traditional domains by providing command, control, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as engaging in cyber warfare, alongside conventional or weapons of mass destruction operations, indicating an escalating race in military space robotics.
Emergence of New Legal Requirements: The arrival of advanced technologies raises questions regarding their legal classifications and the criminal responsibilities associated with their use. The diversity of technologies leads to complex legal frameworks, and the situation will likely become even more complicated in the era of AI. New requirements that have not previously been encountered will arise, such as establishing legal personhood for both physical and legal entities. In the case of AI, we must explore a third pathway, as it exists outside these two categories, with ongoing debates due to the unsettled definition of AI so far.
The question of criminal responsibility for AI actions in case of crimes committed through its use also arises: on whom does this liability fall—the programmer, the manufacturing company, or the user? Although some countries are striving to establish legislation on this issue, such as Egypt imposing the death penalty for using AI in terrorism or state security-related crimes, the rapid development of AI outpaces these modest efforts.
A new legal challenge could emerge concerning algorithmic bias, necessitating technical safeguards to prevent this and legal frameworks to regulate it. Broadening the perspective towards the future of AI might lead us to entirely new conceptual frameworks; for instance, if advanced prosthetic devices replace most damaged parts of the human body, particularly if nanotechnology combines with genetic engineering and AI, leaving only the brain intact, can we still refer to it as a human being, or is it an augmented human, or perhaps a half-human, half-machine (cyborg)? It is essential for legislators and legal experts to prepare for significant complexities in establishing regulations governing the AI era, as we may need to establish a new social contract defining the AI era.
Transformations in Power: The realist theory has consistently asserted itself in the international environment, emphasizing the principle of power as a central element in international relations. Therefore, states endeavor to maximize their power and seek a distinctive type of strength that ensures their prolonged leadership and hegemony. AI is predicted to bring an unprecedented qualitative shift in the power equation, primarily anchored in a state’s capacity to mobilize and organize individual AI talents and gather data, alongside establishing suitable computational power. This situation will enhance the capabilities of multinational corporations, which are the entities leading research and development operations.
The construction of smart cities and the operation of automated transport systems, including the production of drones and autonomous weapons, will largely involve foreign-produced technologies for most developing countries, meaning that the security and technological-economic control of these states will lie with non-national producers. This reality will expand the power gap between AI-producing countries and those dependent on foreign assistance. The interests of the international system in the 21st century will likely revolve around scientific research, particularly in AI and outer space contexts.
Third: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on State Sovereignty
Technological advancement and military and commercial applications have led to a decline in the concept of state dominance over its internal and external decisions. With the evolution of communications and the information revolution, external flows into states have significantly increased, a trend most countries struggle to manage. The rise of AI exacerbates external influences on states, especially less developed ones forced to rely on AI-producing nations to confront surrounding challenges, increasing their dependence on companies manufacturing smart weapons that will retain control over the systems and capabilities of these weapons.
Moreover, AI applications may restrict or even eliminate privacy; for example, through the Internet of Things (IoT) that gathers detailed and precise information about consumers’ behaviors, allowing producers to analyze economic and social data and potentially guide public opinion towards specific directions or create crises as needed or identify individuals through voice recognition, gait analysis, and precise geographic location mapping. In this context, two trends in data collection can be observed: the first is based on tracking (digital dust) left by individuals’ online activities, wherein dominant internet companies gather data defining people’s behaviors on the web; the second involves gathering data on citizens from the real world through surveillance cameras and IoT sensors, as practiced in China.
This implies that countries could be penetrated by the United States, the current dominator of the web, by surveilling and analyzing citizens’ online movements, while consumers of Chinese goods embedded with IoT devices enable the collection of daily behavior data. The potential for infringing state sovereignty increases with greater reliance on AI systems, particularly if these systems are not produced locally.
Dependence on automated transport and self-driving vehicles shifts transportation control from states to manufacturing companies, which in many cases will be foreign firms. This situation extends to various sectors, including military programs, energy management, infrastructure projects, and surveillance systems like traffic cameras. In summary, we must discuss sovereignty over AI before addressing state sovereignty; in other words, state sovereignty in the 21st century begins with control over AI systems.
Fourth: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Democracy
AI applications significantly affect one of the prominent forms of democratic systems: elections. Through media monitoring algorithms, reputation analysis, and voter trend tracking, AI can predict election outcomes or influence them through deepfake programs, generating false information or creating overwhelming amounts of data that obscure the truth. AI can also affect democracy by infringing on individual privacy through surveillance or tracking programs.
Human rights, particularly freedom of expression, are also threatened by AI. Directed machines programmed with data patterns can inundate discussions with information on essential concepts debated socially within democratic contexts, which may distort discussions widely and dominate them through their capacity to influence public opinion. Thus, some thinkers, like Henry Kissinger, argue that freedom of expression should not extend to AI but should be reserved for humans.
Institutions owning AI technologies could manage and regulate societies, potentially undermining state sovereignty and authority, influencing the political functions of the state. Additionally, using AI applications for surveillance and pattern recognition to strengthen dictatorships and suppress dissent can lead to increased human rights violations.
AI is projected to introduce a new social problem regarding how to integrate and coexist with cyborg societies resulting from the merging of electronic and mechanical technologies with living beings to treat diseases or enhance capabilities, such as implanting electronic chips in brains or deploying intelligent prosthetics. This may even redefine rights and liberties as the human role in verifying, understanding, and assessing information diminishes; AI will reshape and streamline information according to our directives against the steadily advancing AI that never tires or loses focus.
Fifth: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Terrorist Forces
It is evidently clear from AI’s promising capabilities that states can utilize it in combating terrorism, with some techniques already common, like drones. However, the more significant concern arises from the potential use of AI by terrorist groups and organized crime factions. These groups seek to amplify their impact on societies and governments by relying on more destructive and lower-cost means with less risk, enhancing their psychological impact on civilians and raising the costs of warfare. The threat posed by AI in terrorism extends beyond direct attacks using drones or explosive robots; it lies in the feasibility of employing these systems to easily develop weaponry, such as producing missiles or suicide drones through the hybridization of 3D printing technology with AI. Flight simulations and aerodynamic testing could be conducted without actual trials that can be monitored, or AI applications could be leveraged to execute cyberattacks disrupting infrastructure, financial systems, or debilitating nuclear power plants, or releasing toxic materials in civilian gatherings, or deploying AI systems to create unregulated toxic materials or novel drugs.
References
- “Artificial Intelligence and International Politics” – Valerie M. Hudson (Editor)
An early work exploring how AI intersects with state behavior and global systems. - “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future” – Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
A geopolitical take from one of the most influential diplomats of the 20th century. - “AI and International Security: Challenges and Opportunities” – Edited by James Johnson
Covers AI’s implications for nuclear deterrence, strategic stability, and autonomous weapons. - “Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Defense and Foreign Policy Perspectives” – Max Tegmark, James Johnson, and others
Explores both military and ethical aspects in global contexts. - “Governing Artificial Intelligence in Global Context” – Martin Ebers & Susanne Beck (Editors)
Focuses on the regulation and international governance of AI. - “AI, Ethics, and International Affairs” – Wendell Wallach
Explores how ethics can and should guide international AI policies. - “Strategic Instability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” – Edited by Michael C. Horowitz, Paul Scharre
A critical volume on how AI might reshape military and diplomatic strategies. - “The AI Trap: How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Global Power” – Ian Bremmer
A political scientist’s look at the emerging AI cold war. - “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare” – James Johnson
Analyzes the strategic ramifications of AI in military planning and conflict. - “International Politics and Artificial Intelligence” – Anthony J. Masys (Editor)
Explores future risks and opportunities within global governance systems.
- “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity” – Amy Webb
Examines geopolitical dominance of AI companies in the U.S. and China. - “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order” – Kai-Fu Lee
A classic look at the U.S.–China tech race and its implications for world order. - “The Future of Power” – Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Discusses technological power shifts, including AI, in global politics. - “Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech” – Jamie Susskind
Explores how AI and algorithms will challenge sovereignty and political agency. - “Race for the Future: China vs. USA in AI Supremacy” – Daniel Wagner
Looks at international power struggles through the lens of AI innovation.
- “AI and International Law” – Edited by Abhivardhan
Focuses on how AI is transforming international legal norms and behavior. - “Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights” – Edited by Daragh Murray
Covers international institutions and global rights perspectives. - “AI Governance in Global Institutions” – Various Contributors (Oxford/Harvard Press Series)
Examines how UN bodies and global coalitions are addressing AI governance. - “Ethics and Emerging Technologies in International Relations” – David Whetham (Editor)
Includes chapters on AI and its implications for international ethics and military conduct. - “Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War” – Paul Scharre
Although focused on military AI, it discusses diplomatic and strategic outcomes.
Subscribe to our email newsletter to get the latest posts delivered right to your email.
Comments