The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence

An accepted definition of the term geopolitics of artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence and geopolitics still evades scholars and policy-making. Moreover, a widely accepted definition of artificial intelligence is still elusive. This creates a problem to theorise the geopolitics of AI, and how it will alter the international system. Yet, enough has been written on the subject to elucidate it to some degree.

However, Miailhe aims to offer a definition: ‘Embedded in the digital revolution, AI will help determine the international order for decades to come, accentuating and accelerating the dynamics of an old cycle in which technology and power reinforce one another. It will transform certain axioms of geopolitics through new relations between territories, space-time dimensions, and immateriality’ (Miailhe 2018).

Hagan asserted back in 1942 that ‘[g]eopolitics may be summed up as an attempt to find a deterministic principle which controls the development of states. The basic determining factor upon which it has come to rest is that of geographic conditions, and it is materialistic in large degree’ (Hagan 1942).

The geopolitical power balance at a certain time is not simply political but it is closely linked to geographical configurations. These are especially relevant to AI and geopolitics, as it is a premise that AI, and in particular militarised AI, might overcome geographical obstacles in the struggle for hegemony (Tinnirello 2023). For Topalidis et al., ‘[t]he advancement of information technology has had a profound impact on the spatial structure and spatial relationships. These changes have altered the driving forces of the geopolitical pattern since the 1990s, with significant consequences’ (Topalidis et al. 2024).

The effect of AI on geopolitics can be seen to force a reconfiguration of power, sovereignty, and war at the global level. This could lead to a global system in which artificial intelligence reshapes war, sovereignty, and power through state–corporate alliances, and experimental warfare, thereby reordering global power structures and transforming the international system itself (Csernatoni et al. 2025).

This reconfiguration of the international system takes a wider view by Bode and Qiao-Franco, as they include the Global South’s position, in particular with regard to autonomous lethal weapons. They argue that while a group of Global North countries, around the US, has argued in favour of increasing autonomy, the Global South refuses to accept delegating kill decisions to machines. This is not only an operational matter but points out to the way international competition and unequal power relations (especially Global North vs Global South) shape how AI weapons are developed and deployed, how human control is defined, and which coalitions dominate negotiations, what counts as legitimate expertise, and whether binding regulation is even possible (Paul et al. 2024).

For Pavel et al, the manner in which AI reshapes global power trajectories, and the power balance among nations, will be linked to who controls AI and how it is governed, including the possibility that AI systems become strategic assets, arms-race drivers, tools of inequality, platforms of international coordination, and potentially even geopolitical actors themselves (Pavel et al. 2024).

In relation to global hegemony, Schmidt argues that artificial general intelligence (AGI) could change the geopolitical game in a drastic manner. He argues: ‘[W]hereas traditional AI is designed to solve a discrete problem, AGI should be able to perform any mental task a human can and more. [W]hichever country develops the technology first will have a massive advantage, since it could then use AGI to develop ever more advanced versions of AGI, gaining an edge in all other domains of science and technology in the process. A breakthrough in this field could usher in an era of predominance not unlike the short period of nuclear superiority the United States enjoyed in the late 1940s. […] In the contest of the century—the U.S. rivalry with China—the deciding factor will be innovation power. Technological advances in the next five to ten years will determine which country gains the upper hand in this world-shaping competition’ (Schmidt 2023).

Finally, Tinnirello places AGI/superintelligence within an offensive-realist framework to theorise how AGI will intensify great-power competition, generating security dilemmas and power-maximisation dynamics, potentially enabling states to break traditional geopolitical constraints (like the stopping power of water) and pursue global hegemony as the ultimate condition for survival. For Tinnirello, AGI does not merely change warfare tools; it alters the structure of opportunity and fear in the international system, pushing great powers toward faster, more persistent expansive hegemonic struggles. ‘Supposing militarized AGI has been achieved and has similar intelligence to humans, this momentous development can disrupt the international system if it can provide a power advantage against rivals—a weapons system that can define an era, as nuclear weapons did after World War II. […] A great power wielding powerful AGI capabilities that can transcend the biological and geographical constraints we have now will not stop at regional hegemony. Obtaining global hegemony will make this hypothetical great power very safe, as there will be no power that could threaten its existence’ (Tinnirello 2023).