Kazakhstan’s AI expansion: Geopolitical ambition, energy dependency, and the human rights calculus of a Central Asian tech frontier
Original framing: “Inside Kazakhstan’s push to become a regional AI centre” — Al Jazeera
The paradox of Kazakhstan’s AI push lies in its simultaneous embrace of Western tech ethics discourse (e.g., ‘AI for good’) while deploying surveillance tools reminiscent of *Eshu* (Yoruba trickster god), who exposes hypocrisy through inversion. The ‘expert warnings’ about environmental and human rights impacts serve as a modern *Anansi* fable—cautionary tales that distract from the real trickster: the state’s use of AI to consolidate power. The absurdity of Kazakhstan positioning itself as a ‘regional AI center’ while its energy grid remains coal-dependent mirrors *Hermes’* role as a messenger of both progress and deception. This trickster reading reveals how the narrative’s solemnity conceals the state’s performative ‘innovation’ as a smokescreen for control.
Kazakhstan’s AI expansion is not an isolated technological endeavor but a geopolitical maneuver embedded in a legacy of Soviet-era state planning, colonial resource extraction, and authoritarian governance.
The country’s push to become a regional AI hub mirrors China’s techno-authoritarian model, where digital innovation serves as a tool for state control rather than democratic progress. Historical precedents, such as the Soviet *Silicon Steppe*, show that centralized tech development often stifles innovation while enabling surveillance, a pattern that risks repeating itself unless marginalized voices—Indigenous communities, tech workers, and dissidents—are centered in policy decisions. Cross-cultural perspectives from Africa and Latin America reveal that AI in resource-rich regions often deepens neocolonial data extraction, a dynamic Kazakhstan must avoid by integrating Indigenous knowledge systems like *adige* into its tech governance. The trickster dimension exposes the hypocrisy of Kazakhstan’s ‘AI for good’ narrative, where warnings about environmental and human rights impacts serve as a distraction from the state’s use of AI to consolidate power. To break this cycle, Kazakhstan must adopt decentralized co-governance models, transition to renewable-energy data centers, and establish digital rights safeguards—solutions that align with both global climate commitments and post-colonial tech ethics. Without these systemic changes, the AI expansion will perpetuate the extractive patterns of the past, turning Kazakhstan into another node in a global techno-extractivist network.