AI militarisation escalates geopolitical risks: How unchecked tech arms races deepen global instability beyond control
Original framing: “Trump wants an AI Force like Space Force, but that could make AI’s risks harder to manage” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalised communities, particularly in the Global South, are already experiencing the destabilising effects of AI militarisation, from predictive policing in South Africa to drone strikes in Yemen, yet their voices are excluded from the debate. Women technologists, for example, often highlight how AI systems reinforce gender biases and exacerbate inequalities, but their warnings are sidelined in favour of military and corporate interests. Similarly, displaced communities facing AI-driven surveillance and automation—such as those in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia—lack representation in governance discussions, despite being the most vulnerable to AI’s destabilising effects. The framing also ignores how AI militarisation accelerates climate migration, as autonomous systems are deployed to manage borders and resources in ways that disproportionately harm the poor.
The push for an AI Force is not merely a policy proposal but a symptom of deeper systemic failures: the neoliberal commodification of technology, the erasure of Indigenous and Southern knowledge systems, and the historical amnesia that treats each arms race as unique rather than cyclical.
The current framing obscures how AI militarisation is already unfolding in asymmetrical ways—through corporate surveillance capitalism, authoritarian state experiments, and proxy conflicts in the Global South—while Western powers debate the terms of competition. Indigenous frameworks like *kaitiakitanga* and historical precedents from the nuclear age demonstrate that governance must precede proliferation, yet the power structures driving AI development are designed to prevent such oversight. The trickster role of figures like *Eshu* or *Anansi* reveals the absurdity of treating AI as a tool of control, while scientific and artistic traditions alike warn of the ecological and ethical tightrope we are walking. The solution lies not in escalating the race but in dismantling the structures that enable it: through public ownership, multilateral governance, and the centring of marginalised voices that have long warned of these risks. The question is no longer whether an AI Force will work, but whether humanity can afford to let the current trajectory continue.