Artificial intelligence in an age of rivalry, risk, and power.

An important new book on the topic which analyses the relationship beyond technology

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or editor of several books, including American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump (2018), Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (2016), What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (2014), and Latin America’s Cold War (2010). His newest book is The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, co-authored with Charles Edel. Hal previously served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States.

Learn more about Hal Brands: https://halbrands.org/

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging and evolving amid intense global competition. Geopolitics of AI examines how breakthroughs in AI intersect with great-power rivalry, military competition, economic statecraft, and competing models of governance—and how those dynamics will shape the development and use of AI itself.

Edited by Hal Brands, this volume brings together leading scholars and policy analysts to address AI’s strategic implications. Contributors examine how AI may alter military operations, economic productivity, alliance structures, and deterrence, while also creating new challenges of instability, escalation, and misuse. The book also considers how geopolitical competition will influence technological innovation in the years ahead. Rivalries among major powers will shape research priorities, regulatory approaches, and international norms and will determine whether AI becomes a source of cooperation, coercion, or conflict. These pressures raise urgent questions about governance, control, and the balance between innovation and restraint.

Geopolitics of AI offers a timely, wide-angle perspective on one of the defining challenges of contemporary international politics. It will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations and security studies, as well as policymakers, analysts, and readers seeking to understand how emerging technologies are reshaping global order.