Artificial Intelligence and the Future of International Security: Emerging Challenges for the International System
Contributors
- Dr. Saira Akram Assistant Professor (OPS), department of Political Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Punjab, Pakistan.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now embedded in military targeting, intelligence analysis, cyber operations, information campaigns, and great-power industrial competition. Scholarship remains divided between accounts that treat AI as a revolutionary shift in power and accounts that stress its limits and uneven diffusion. This paper asks how AI is reshaping international security and under what conditions international institutions can manage its emerging risks. It combines a transparent narrative review of peer-reviewed research, official documents and policy analysis published mainly between 2018 and September 2026 with a structured comparison of three cases: United States–China competition over advanced semiconductors, AI-enabled drone warfare in the Russia–Ukraine war, and the multilateral effort to regulate lethal autonomous weapons through the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the UN General Assembly. Drawing on the security dilemma and liberal institutionalism, it argues that AI's most consequential security effects arise less from "killer robots" than from three interacting mechanisms: the compression of decision time, the concentration of the inputs needed to build advanced AI, and the erosion of verifiable information. These mechanisms intensify competition but do not preclude cooperation. Institutions are most likely to succeed where they target narrow, observable behaviours, where leading states perceive shared exposure to accidents, and where developing countries gain material benefits rather than only obligations. The paper concludes with recommendations on human control, testing, incident reporting, confidence-building and inclusive capacity-building.
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Corresponding Author
Dr. Saira Akram
Assistant Professor (OPS), department of Political Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Punjab, Pakistan.
Corresponding Author: [email protected]
