Artificial intelligence is often compared to nuclear weapons in its strategic significance. Nuclear history reminds us that transformative technologies reshape international politics without necessarily replacing its core logic. Whether AI will follow the same trajectory remains uncertain. What is already likely, however, is the emergence of a balance of technology as a major concern in global power dynamics. Will this new balance signal a new structure of world politics, or merely a new instrument within an old one?
As a technological breakthrough, AI is in a class of its own. Nothing that we have invented before has mimicked and augmented human intelligence in the same way as it does. It is changing how we conduct our lives—from writing poetry to killing each other—in an unprecedented fashion. And because international affairs are a dimension of human affairs, the challenge before IR theory is to get a handle on the technology that may change everything. As we shall see below, AI is not untheorizable, and that is because while it is impacting international relations, it is not, on current evidence, likely to change them in a fundamental sense.