The dictum “whoever rules AI shall rule the world” is one that has come to guide great power dynamics in the 21st Century. Nearly a decade since Vladimir Putin made this statement, the modes through which AI is shaping the contours of evolving geopolitics is increasingly becoming apparent. Both the colossal opportunities and the risks flowing from its ubiquitous diffusion have started to unravel during Trump 2.0 as the United States vows to retain leadership in AI. Recognising AI leadership as critical to national security and economic competitiveness, Washington has been laying stress on keeping AI free from “ideological bias” and “engineered social agendas”.
Going back on several Biden-era guardrails that sought to mitigate risks emanating from AI integration, Donald Trump appears to be prioritising innovation and competitiveness in his bid to leverage AI to Make America Great Again. As the AI race enters the Trump era, the emergent picture of the world order appears fragmented as major contenders navigate through a milieu in which change is the only constant. Markets and ideologies are set to determine the implications of AI in the near future as the world manages a spontaneous and unpredictable American leadership.
AI Race: The Expected and the Unexpected
Humanity has amply been cautioned about the ‘expected’ and the ‘unexpected’ in the Age of AI. Such perceptions on the expected and the unexpected have been shaped by both history and popular imageries of dystopian doom in which AI spirals out of control to become an out-of-control, terminator-esque threat. Among the unexpected was the sheer velocity at which AI moved from the realm of innovation to application to become a sociotechnical behemoth, ubiquitously present across the societal realms.
Several caveats flow from the glorious tales of rise and fall of great powers through history. The three industrial revolutions and major scientific breakthroughs in the past have been followed by a reconfiguration in power hierarchies. As such, a techno-economic logic has determined such reconfigurations, with differentials in economic power tilting the scales of balance of power. As rising powers acquire power credentials through advances in tech, the status quo has been altered, often with violent aftershocks being felt across geographies.
A lot of expectations also have been pinned on Big Tech as the messiahs of AI-based techno-nationalism. The industry driven by its newfound conventional wisdom of moving fast and breaking things meant that anybody was well-positioned to win and gain riches, provided they can concoct the right cocktail of ingenuity, money and mindset. Yet, Silicon Valley was unexpectedly shocked and awed when DeepSeek upended the global marketplace with its advanced models created through optimising resources. It is in this very background that Donald Trump’s second presidency has commenced. As Washington grows an outright affinity towards crony capitalism, the AI race is increasingly becoming about a scramble for markets, which are captured through selling ideologies.
AI and the Scramble for Markets
The dynamics shaping the contours of the evolving AI race are apparent from an ongoing scramble for digital marketplaces. This scramble is visible at two levels: On one hand, governments are looking to rein in big tech through regulation in a bid to avoid power concentration. Silicon Valleys of the world have led the respective AI revolutions from the front, readily heeding the call for action to get their nations ready. However, a tussle between market and government has been a commonplace trend across Europe, America and China.
While the Big Tech have been heralding progress and innovation, governments have served to draw lines through regulation and mandating compliance on certain non-negotiables, be it to do with transparency and accountability or through enforcing the non-violability of human rights norms. Governments have also had to intervene to regulate content to manage misinformation, and break monopolies much against the move fast and break things spirit favouring innovation. The unfolding dynamic also becomes key because it is the government’s ability to steer the AI ship that allows strategic decisions to be made in national interests.
On another level, big tech are pawns in the proxy wars that the major contenders in the AI race are waging to capture digital markets in the Global South, where they seek to leverage the effects of the internet boom and youth demographic. Seen in this way, big tech are envoys of the state going out to win hearts and minds by forging digital spheres of influence for their respective governments.
Market to Military
Strategy pundits had initially deemed the advent of military applications of AI as the ultimate gamechanger. These imaginaries of killer robots and algorithmic warfare essentially served to indicate that it would be a breakthrough in military AI which would flip balance of power on its head. The expected effects were akin to that of the nuclear weapon, the relative capabilities in which have become central to perceptions on balance of power. However, it is the diffusion of AI innovation from the civilian to military sphere which appears to have broader strategic implications.
The telltale signs of the economic balance of power shaping the equations in the military sphere are evident from recent developments. The magic of generative AI is such that it is the same open-source models supporting systems such as Chat GPT which is also the basis for which military innovations are moving forward. China developing an AI model for helping the PLA’s strategic decisionmaking based on Meta’s open-source Llama 13B large language model (LLM) is testament to such an effect.
In response, Meta, Open AI and Google have all reneged on pledges to not allow their AI models in developing systems employed in warfare and surveillance to openly enter into the defence and intelligence arena. The radical change in stance was prompted by the US government recognising the need to take a global lead in responsible use of AI in the military domain, especially as AI can bolster authoritarianism through undermining democracy and human rights. This brings focus on the question, “is the AI race ultimately about ideology?.
Battle of Ideologies
The Trump 2.0 era has brought new focus on the idea of democracy and how democracies should behave in the Age of AI. As such, geopolitics understood as a clash of ideological narratives never ceased to exist. Democracy may have been fighting fascists and later the communists in the 20th Century. As far as ideological clashes in the 21st Century go, AI is indeed the point of inflection. The ongoing battle of ideologies pits democracy against an often unnamed, yet obvious scourge of authoritarianism.
A central driver of this dynamic is the idea that AI made by democracies would be democratic, while the AI systems made in authoritarian systems reflect authoritarian values. Questions on ideology particularly came to the fore amid DeepSeek’s perceived inclination to the CCP ideology. Reading in between the lines, the central premise flowing from the popular narratives on AI disseminated in the English language is the idea that Chinese AI systems would be oppressive and undemocratic as opposed to the more democratic US-led AI stack.
Such narratives are floating around in a reality wherein AI -enabled misinformation and disinformation are undermining democratic processes while driving polarisation across societies. The immediate future in the Age of AI will indeed be defined by this intersection between technology and ideology, wherein the ideology itself would determine access to markets. As the AI race enters uncharted waters in the second Trump era, spheres of influences are clearly reshaping according to contrasting narratives on democracy. Much like the battle of ideologies Cold War, the outcome of the AI race in the 21st Century would be shaped by narratives usurping and reshaping threat perceptions, actions and reactions.
The author is Consultant at Research and Information System for Developing Countries