As artificial intelligence becomes the nervous system of advanced economies, it is simultaneously becoming the grammar of power in international relations. We are entering the era of AI diplomacy — where national influence is measured not just in nuclear warheads or GDP, but in computer clusters, proprietary models, and access to strategic data.
But AI, as a General Purpose Technology, has accelerated the fusion of technology and statecraft. Like the steam engine in the British Empire or petroleum in post-World War II U.S. hegemony, AI now underwrites national competitiveness. And like oil, its essential inputs — data, compute, and algorithms — are becoming commodities over which alliances are struck and conflicts sparked. It is thus crucial for leading powers to control it.
It is far from certain that Klemens von Metternich, Henry Kissinger, or any other foreign affairs luminaries of our past would have recognized that string of diplomacy. This transformation has been at least one decade in the making. As early as the 2010s, the digital dimension of transatlantic relations — most notably the E.U.-U.S. clash over freedom of expression on social media platforms — began to recalibrate traditional diplomatic alignments.
GSA ANNOUNCES DEAL WITH MUSK’S XAI FOR HEAVILY DISCOUNTED ACCESS
We have seen this in the past with other technologies: the steam engine (the cornerstone of British dominance in the early 18th century), electricity, and well in our distant past, even the mastery of iron, the wheel, or fire. One should remember that oil control has (and is still, although to a lesser extent) historically been the linchpin of United States foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. AI and data will play the same role in a few decades.
The current U.S. administration has not merely acknowledged this shift; it has enshrined it as doctrine. Trump’s trip to the Middle East, with massive investment announcements from Middle Eastern capital into the U.S. and a close technology alliance (relinquishing the Biden Administration’s stringent rules on AI Export diffusion), was mainly heralded as a new technology diplomacy. In light of the close political support for Israel, it could not be confused with traditional foreign diplomacy. The Department of State was less involved here than the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for instance.
But the recent Trump visit to the United Kingdom was different in nature. There, amidst royal pageantry, the two nations unveiled the U.K.-U.S. Technology Prosperity Agreement — a document of both economic ambition and ideological alignment. It binds the nations not only through infrastructure projects and joint research in AI drug discovery and quantum computing but also through a shared worldview: that AI innovation must remain unencumbered by international bureaucracy. As NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang put it, this is the “Big Bang” of the AI era. It encompassed U.S. companies’ investments in massive local centers, common advancements in drug discovery, a new AI Growth Zone in Northumberland, and cooperation on quantum and nuclear projects related to AI. This Big Bang of the AI Era will deliver thousands of jobs and also include a massive investment by Larry Ellison in Oxford University for AI initiatives.
But the U.N. General Assembly this week was even more of a watershed moment for AI diplomacy. The United Nations has long been trying to preempt the field of AI Global Governance, at times with the help of the Biden Administration and its infatuation with AI Safety Institutes. If the U.S. AI Safety Institute has not been dismantled but reoriented toward growth and evaluation (becoming CAISI, the Center for AI Safety and Innovation), Trump has rejected any form of global governance of AI.
At the U.N. tribune, OSTP’s Director Michael Kratsios, on behalf of the White House, pummeled this week any effort toward global governance of AI: he coalesced global governance of AI with mass control, the loss of freedom, and an authoritarian global state. He reasserted the current administration’s fight for freedom and the pursuit of happiness against the globalist agenda, using AI as a Trojan horse for future control of the citizenry. In my view, after Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the AI Summit in Paris in February, this is another step in building a new US doctrine for winning the AI Race.
NVIDIA TO INVEST $100 BILLION IN OPENAI UNDER NEW PARTNERSHIP
Thus, a new U.S. doctrine is emerging. It is unapologetically accelerationist, oriented around deregulation, innovation, and technological sovereignty. And while it resonates most clearly with the current conservative playbook, it is unlikely to be reversed by a future progressive administration. Just as no serious faction would advocate ceding internet governance to an international tribunal, few will argue for surrendering AI control to a UN body. The logic of great-power competition — and the centrality of AI within it — transcends partisanship.
In lieu of universal governance, the United States should pursue a pragmatic strategy: deepen bilateral AI alliances with trusted partners, bundle market access with infrastructure investment, and tether AI cooperation to shared values of openness and individual liberty. This is not merely a strategy for AI. It is a blueprint for American leadership in a post-industrial age.
Sebastien Laye is an economist and AI entrepreneur.
