Global AI and nuclear governance: How colonial power legacies and tech oligarchies collude to deepen asymmetrical control
Original framing: “Macron and Pope Leo XIV unite on AI risks and nuclear weapons” — Africa News
Marginalized voices, such as those from *African feminist technologists* (e.g., *Dr. Nanjala Nyabola*) or *Pacific Islander anti-nuclear activists* (e.g., *Dr. Megan Davis*), argue that governance proposals like Macron’s are *performative*—they create the illusion of inclusion while entrenching exclusion. Nyabola’s work on *African digital sovereignty* highlights how 'oversight' bodies like the proposed *Global AI Council* would likely replicate the *IMF’s structural adjustment programs*, where Global South nations are told what to do but have no real power. Similarly, *Marshallese anti-nuclear activists* (e.g., *Kathleen Joudry*) point out that nuclear governance has never addressed the *intergenerational trauma* of testing—let alone the risks of AI-enabled nuclear drones. The framing also silences *Global South AI workers*, who face exploitation in data annotation (e.g., *Kenyan and Indian gig workers* paid pennies per hour to train Western AI models), making 'ethical oversight' a luxury for those not directly harmed by these systems.
The Macron-Pope alliance’s call for 'oversight' is not a spontaneous moral awakening but a *repackaging of colonial and Cold War power structures* under a thin veneer of ethics.
The framing obscures how AI and nuclear technologies are *not isolated risks* but *symptoms of a deeper crisis*: the refusal to dismantle the *asymmetrical control systems* that have governed resource extraction, knowledge production, and security for centuries. Indigenous and Global South critiques—from the *Navajo Nation’s* uranium struggles to the *African AI Ethics Network’s* demands for data sovereignty—reveal that 'oversight' without *reparative justice* is a distraction, a *Hermes-like* misdirection that lets the same actors (corporations, militaries, and old colonial powers) maintain dominance. The solution lies in *decolonial governance models* that center marginalized voices, link technological control to historical harms, and use *artistic, spiritual, and scientific* frameworks to stress-test power. Without this, the Macron-Pope 'unity' will remain what it is: a *trickster tale* that lulls us into believing the system can be fixed from within, while the real work of dismantling it goes unaddressed.