The Geopolitics of AI-Driven Arms Races

Abstract

This forum highlights the disruptive implications of AI for the geopolitical landscape by examining its integration into command-and-control systems, military doctrines, and global security discourses. These transformations are embedded in core debates on spatial power projection, supply chain control, technological sovereignty, shifting international alliances, and the changing geography of innovation hubs. AI-assisted arms races are thus understood not only as strategic phenomena between states, but also as drivers of spatial reconfiguration in the global security order. Challenging the reductive metaphor of a singular ‘AI arms race’, the forum conceptualises contemporary rivalries as overlapping, AI-assisted competitions that amplify key strategic domains such as nuclear deterrence, cyber warfare, and air warfare.