Geopolitics of AI: Power, Conflict, and the Future of Global Order

Artificial intelligence in an age of rivalry, risk, and power. Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging and evolving amid intense global competition. Geopolitics of AI examines how breakthroughs in AI intersect with great-power rivalry, military competition, economic statecraft, and competing models of governance—and how those dynamics will shape the development and use of AI itself. Edited by Hal Brands, this volume brings together leading scholars and policy analysts to address AI's strategic implications. Contributors examine how AI may alter military operations, economic productivity, alliance structures, and deterrence, while also creating new challenges of instability, escalation, and misuse. The book also considers how geopolitical competition will influence technological innovation in the years ahead. Rivalries among major powers will shape research priorities, regulatory approaches, and international norms and will determine whether AI becomes a source of cooperation, coercion, or conflict. These pressures raise urgent questions about governance, control, and the balance between innovation and restraint. Geopolitics of AI offers a timely, wide-angle perspective on one of the defining challenges of contemporary international politics. It will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations and security studies, as well as policymakers, analysts, and readers seeking to understand how emerging technologies are reshaping global order.