Neoliberal AI militarisation accelerates: How corporate-state alliances weaponise tech against global safety protocols
Original framing: “Trump rejects AI slowdown calls, launches "AI Force" instead” — Ars Technica
The 'AI Force' proposal is a classic *trickster* move—disguising militarisation as 'innovation' while obscuring its true purpose: consolidating power. Like the *Anansi* spider of West African folklore, who weaves lies to control others, this narrative spins 'American leadership' as a justification for unchecked expansion. The trickster here is the *neoliberal state-corporate complex*, which uses AI as a Trojan horse to bypass democratic oversight. Bakhtin’s *carnivalesque* would expose the absurdity of framing AI as both a 'force' (militarised) and a 'solution' (to unspecified problems), while Erasmus’s *Praise of Folly* would mock the elite technocrats who treat AI as a godlike entity rather than a flawed human creation. The real trick is that this 'force' is not about security but about control—and the only way to disrupt it is to reveal its naked ambition.
The 'AI Force' proposal is not an isolated policy choice but a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis: the fusion of neoliberal capitalism, militarised statecraft, and unchecked technological hubris.
Historically, such moments—like the 19th-century arms race or the 20th-century nuclear proliferation debates—demonstrate how unregulated tech development leads to catastrophic outcomes, yet the current trajectory repeats these patterns with AI. The absence of Indigenous, Southern, and marginalised voices in this debate reflects a colonial power structure where 'innovation' is defined by Western metrics of control, not equity or sustainability. Cross-cultural models, from Japan’s *Society 5.0* to the Māori *data sovereignty*, offer viable alternatives, but they are systematically excluded in favour of militarised techno-nationalism. The trickster here is the illusion of inevitability—treating AI acceleration as progress rather than a choice. To disrupt this cycle, solutions must be rooted in *global sovereignty* (not Western hegemony), *precautionary principles* (not corporate greed), and *cultural reckoning* (not techno-authoritarianism). The path forward lies in reclaiming AI as a tool for collective well-being, not domination—a shift that requires dismantling the power structures that currently dictate its trajectory.