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The Lens
The nation-state is the fundamental unit of political organization. It claims sovereignty over a territory, a population, and the rules that govern both. AI challenges this sovereignty on three fronts simultaneously.
From above: AI systems operate across borders, controlled by corporations more powerful than most governments, subject to no sovereign authority. From below: AI empowers individuals and small groups with capabilities once reserved for states - surveillance, propaganda, economic disruption. From within: AI reshapes the domestic economy, labor market, and information environment faster than any government can respond.
The question is not whether nations will regulate AI. It is whether the nation-state as a form of political organization can survive the forces that AI unleashes.
The False Remedies
”National AI strategies”
Every major nation now has an AI strategy. Most are wish lists - aspirational goals combined with modest funding increases. They treat AI as a sector to be promoted rather than a force to be governed. A national AI strategy that does not address the sovereignty challenge is like a climate strategy that does not mention carbon.
”Digital sovereignty through data localization”
Requiring data to be stored within national borders gives the appearance of sovereignty without the substance. The algorithms that process the data, the models trained on it, and the corporations that control them remain beyond national reach. Data localization is a geographic solution to a computational problem.
”International cooperation will solve it”
The call for international cooperation assumes that nations share interests and can coordinate effectively. The reality is that AI is the most strategically contested technology since nuclear weapons. Nations are racing to achieve AI dominance, not cooperating to govern it. The incentive structure points toward competition, not coordination.
What We Actually Need
National
A reconceptualization of sovereignty for the digital age. This means building domestic AI capability as a matter of national security, establishing regulatory authority over AI systems that affect citizens regardless of where the systems are hosted, and investing in the technical capacity to understand and govern AI at the frontier.
Global
New international institutions designed for the AI era - not extensions of existing bodies that were built for a different world, but purpose-built organizations with the technical expertise, enforcement authority, and legitimacy to govern a technology that respects no borders.