The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has serious geopolitical implications. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, declared in 2017 that “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world”. His words remain ever true today.

Big data, machine learning, and cloud computing are the three technologies that make artificial intelligence possible. However, when taken into a geopolitical context, then a country’s core economy, purchasing power, and ability to produce physical products all become equally important.

From economic advantages to military and bureaucratic ones, the importance of AI in any country’s political environment cannot be overstated. Given that major governments are already investing furiously into their economies’ AI sectors, those who don’t invest today will lose out tomorrow.

This article looks at the reality of artificial intelligence in the geopolitical context of sovereign nations, empires, and revolutionaries hurrying to get ahead of each other.

The Geopolitical Stakes of AI Are High

Make no mistakes about it – the geopolitical stakes of artificial intelligence are high. In fact, they are very high. The AI industry is changing the geopolitical landscape at an alarming rate, especially in the last few years. If you have not been paying attention, then it is time to realize just how instrumental artificial intelligence has become in shaping the future of the planet.

To be a world power today, a country is required to also be a leader in the field of AI. Otherwise, it risks its national security if it relies on other governments or even on its enemy for the technology. The current scramble for AI dominance is therefore a real arms race because whosoever dominates the technology that makes the chips for AI, the basic infrastructure, and the algorithms, wields serious political power that it can leverage at any time.

To give you an idea of what is at stake. The UAE appointed a minister for AI in 2017, and in January 2025, the US president announced a $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure.

Propaganda & The Public Discourse

The first problem that any country that understands the importance of artificial intelligence must face is the issue of propaganda and management of the public discourse. In simple terms, given that AI chatbots and practically every other AI system can be tuned with any political bias of its developer’s choosing, there is political danger when a substantial population of any country uses AI products for business, communication, and even leisure.

The issue of propaganda and managing the public discourse of a target country is well understood by governments such as the Chinese, who built the Great Firewall to shield their citizens from foreign influence.

With AI, however, the generated output seems to be entirely computer-generated to the average AI user, and this is where the danger lies. A biased and popular chatbot, for instance, can be employed to sow public discord, create chaos in a location, or even plunge an entire population into a major crisis or civil war.

Take for instance Grok, xAI’s chatbot model that runs on the x.com platform, formerly called Twitter. On the 8th of July 2025, users of x.com noticed unhinged or out-of-line content from Grok, as it posted politically charged and unfiltered content, to everyone’s surprise. The company took the bot offline after a few hours and allegedly fired the engineer who had allowed Grok to speak its unfiltered and politically incorrect mind.

Economic Implications of AI

Politics is about managing economies and artificial intelligence stands to create a great economic boost comparable to the industrial revolution and digitization. From industrial robots in manufacturing to service bots in restaurants and care homes, the applications are vast.

Then, there are supply chain optimizations, cheaper production costs from automation, and improvements in economic output, efficiency, and productivity in general. 

China, for instance, has been investing heavily in industrial automation, and artificial intelligence will progressively make their factories more autonomous with the ability to produce cheaper products with higher quality. This gives China the ability to dominate more markets in the future and automatically makes it a political opponent of any other country that aims to dominate those same markets.

Artificial intelligence will increasingly erase or reduce the importance of many jobs. However, it will equally create new ones in similar economic sectors, but with much higher productivity ratios compared to those jobs that were erased. The simple reality here is that whichever country produces the best-trained workforce for these emerging AI jobs will obviously gain major political leverage. 

This leverage stands true, even when the jobs are not locally available in the home country and the trained citizens have to emigrate to other countries to do the work, as was proven by the alleged spying of Indian IT workers in Iran during the 12-day war of June 2025.

When it comes to AI specifically though, the communist party of China (CPC), which is the permanent government of the country, seemed to have already identified the future role AI was going to play many years back and therefore, pushed for higher education of Chinese engineers in the field of artificial intelligence. Today, just look at the engineering teams of the most dominant AI corporations, and you will realize that the true artificial intelligence competition is between China-based and America-based Chinese engineers. 

(yep! That wasn’t a typo.)

Military Implications of AI

Missiles have been smart weapons for a long time, and their proper implementation offers immense strategic benefits for any military campaign. Adding AI capabilities to missiles is also a great idea, but the major cost-reward benefit of AI in modern warfare lies with drones, and the cheaper, the better.

Cheap and smart drones with high precision are the newest threat on the battlefield, akin to when battle tanks were introduced to the war front. As the current war in Ukraine and even the 12-day Iranian war demonstrate, cheap drones costing just a few thousand dollars can be used to launch surprisingly effective attacks on the enemy.

Given their low cost, drones are also being launched in swarms, making it more difficult for air defense interceptors, for instance, to stop them. Furthermore, the most alarming part is that one or two kamikaze drones worth less than $20,000 each can easily destroy enemy equipment worth over $1,000,000. That is the scary reality that the world has woken up to, thanks to artificial intelligence.

Finally, while drones usually mean unmanned aerial vehicles, various types of unmanned vehicles are being developed and tested. These include:

• Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs): These run on land just like cars and tanks and are currently being tested on the Ukrainian warfront by Russia. China’s Unitree also has a robot dog that is vastly adaptable.
• Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs): These are boats that work on the water surface and are often called drone boats. They are currently being developed and tested by Ukraine and Yemen.
• Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs): These work under water and look like torpedoes.
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): The most popular type of drones, being developed and tested by nearly everyone.

Deployed AI Political Tools

AI applications for political purposes is not some future-oriented stuff; it is already happening. Here are some of the many applications that already employ artificial intelligence to achieve political goals.

• Autonomous Cyber Defense: To guard the country’s infrastructure against enemy hackers.
• Deepfakes: Artificial intelligence is often employed in making politicians say whatever the video creator wants them to say.
• Espionage: Drone images and data from the web is analyzed to keep tabs on persons of interest.
• Facial Recognition: AI programs are often used to identify criminals using facial recognition.
• Warfare Drones: Attaching a grenade to a drone makes it a deadly weapon.
• Campaign Ads: AI was used to micro-target campaign ads by Obama.
• Automated Public Policies: AI chat-bots can help provide government services at a lower cost.
• Fraud Detection: In government programs and their implementation.

The AI Supply Chain

Given that AI is of so much geopolitical importance, its entire sector, therefore, should be a national security issue for any serious country; and they are.

The AI supply chain includes everything from chip fabs where the AI micro-processors are manufactured to data centers that house the huge number of computers needed to power these AI models, to the land where the data centers are built, the electric power supplying the servers, and all the undersea cables that connect one data center to another. Even the engineers who develop and manage these systems are of major importance, as well as critical minerals and rare-earth elements needed to manufacture various vital components.

One might be tempted to think that these items listed above are not of much geopolitical importance. But consider what happens when two, three, or four major undersea cables serving a particular country are severed as an act of sabotage. 

• Or how about the dramatic tariff and sanctions war between the Trump administration and China?
• How about the ban on chip exports from the USA to China?
• How about China’s ban on rare-earth elements exports to the USA?

These are all methods of sabotaging your geopolitical opponent; it helps a country gain leverage while slowing its opponent’s progress.

USA Vs China Rivalry

Talking about China and the USA, the United States was all set to lead the AI revolution, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about the supremacy of America’s OpenAI, Google, and Meta’s models. 

But then came Deepseek, an ambitious project from China, which, when compared to its American competition, runs on a shoestring budget. Still, it achieved the unthinkable and proved to the world that quality large-language artificial intelligence models do not need to cost several billion dollars. The company even went further and open-sourced their Deepseek project, thereby landing a punch on America’s AI capitalists.

American companies still produce the best AI models at the moment, though, with Grok 4 and Google’s Gemini 2 making headlines this year. Google is additionally integrating its models into everyday products such as smartwatches, the same road that Huawei is taking with its Eyewear 2 smart glasses.

It is hard to say who will win the technological and economic battles between these two nations, since both have their edges, such as America’s endless capital and vast industry compared to China’s engineering talent and manufacturing capability. However, when it boils down to politics, the CPC is years ahead of the American government with its long-term planning culture.

Russia Vs NATO

Another area where the impact and alarming speed of innovations in artificial intelligence development is very obvious is in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. What started out as a regional conflict eventually engaged the armed forces of over 30 nations, making it a global conflict, or as some would say, Russia vs NATO.

Although military hardware from all around the world was sent to the Ukrainian front–from German Leopards to American Abrams tanks, M113 APCs, M777 howitzers, Turkish Bayraktar drones, and even British Challenger tanks–the greatest surprise to come from this conflict is the devastatingly dangerous threat posed by cheap drones that are powered by artificial intelligence.

Ukraine and the West initially led the innovations in this area, but the Russians soon caught up and are currently launching over 500-700 of their Geran-2 drones daily into Ukraine. Russia licensed the Geran drone from Iran, which developed it as the Shaheed-136. They then fitted this cheap Persian invention with all manner of gadgets and AI systems to turn it into the Geran drone and started their manufacture inside Russia.

But while Russia’s Geran drones target military installations and hardware, smaller FPV (First Person View) drones are even deadlier against soldiers. For instance, a recent report revealed that while artillery fire accounted for 13.6% and  FAB bombs accounted for a mere 3.7% of a Ukrainian unit’s injuries on the battlefield, FPV drones accounted for 49% of their injuries, most of them targeting the Ukrainian supply lines kilometres behind the war front.

To Regulate or Not to Regulate?

One last issue with artificial intelligence is the question of regulation. The European Union is currently leading other political blocs in data governance and oversight of artificial intelligence and similar technologies.

The problem with the EU, however, is that it is a cyber-vassal from a past era. To explain, most of Europe relies on American technology, and the European start-up scene is a sad story when compared to America and even Asia. In other words, Europe is a shadow of its past self, with dwindling industrial productivity and relevance on the world stage.

Those countries pushing the limits of artificial intelligence and striving to squeeze the last drops of geopolitical leverage from it will remain averse to AI regulations or at least try to delay every attempt at global oversight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions concerning the geopolitics of artificial intelligence.

Q: Does artificial intelligence have a political bias?

A: Yes, all AI models are politically biased.

Q: Will future wars feature AI technology?

A: Definitely, the war-front of the future will see more autonomous robots, land, sea, and air drones.

Q: Is artificial intelligence used by governments?

A: Yes, some governments have been using AI, while others are still on the fence.

Q: Will AI replace politicians someday?

A: Maybe, maybe not.

Q: How many countries are using AI as a weapon?

A: It is hard to say, as many countries keep a lot of their programs secret.

Conclusion

In rounding off, it might be worthwhile that speculate a little about the future of artificial intelligence and geopolitics. And if you are wondering what the future might look like in this regard, you will have to look at it all as a game, just as in warfare, where a country either wins or loses.

It may be hard for many to swallow, but given the dominance of Chinese engineers in the artificial intelligence industry, the People’s Republic of China will most probably continue to surprise the world in various sectors implementing artificial intelligence technology, such as drones, robots, cars, electronics, military hardware, and so on.

The United States will not be able to compete with China in these fields, at least not in the near or medium-term, and especially because of the relatively bloated prices of American products compared to Chinese ones.

Finally, if the Ukraine war ends this year, then Ukrainian engineers might still top the list for AI drone warfare. But if the war continues past this year and Ukraine eventually collapses, then Russia will officially own the world’s most experienced army in artificial intelligence and drone warfare.