The drive to weaponize software has seen Russia and China invest in AI, anticipating that it may be an equalizer where they are otherwise grossly outspent by the United States. As part of the larger investment into the research and deployment of cyber-weapons, supposedly the prospect of using AI to add automated rapid decision-making selfdefence and response capabilities to a defence grid can act as a deterrent as well as help states advance their interests. When it comes to security concerns, former US Defense Secretary James Mattis (2018) said that AI is ‘fundamentally different’. The most obvious way is the extent to which American hegemony is being challenged by the Chinese state (and to a lesser extent the Russian state too) as these entities each seek to maintain or secure the commanding heights of the international political economy – so much so that ‘geopolitical rivalries have stormed back to centre stage’ (Mead, 2014, 69). For this reason, Jeremy Straub (2018) calls AI ‘the weapon of the next Cold War’.

Other researchers echo Mead and Straub, suggesting that efforts to weaponize AI herald the return of great power conflicts as each of these states offers a different template for economic success and capital accumulation. ‘Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century’, Nicholas Wright suggests, ‘so the struggle between liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism is set to define the twentyfirst’. Importantly, he adds that AI ‘offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over them’ (Wright, 2018).

Wright's argument is indicative of an emerging line of analysis in contemporary Anglo-American economic thought where orthodox assumptions are being revised by the looming impact of new technologies, and specifically AI seemingly allows repressive regimes to avoid the growth stagnation traps that bedevil these kinds of polities (see Chapter 2 for Acemoglu and Robinson's work on the relationship between repression and growth stagnation). With AI allegedly revolutionizing the international political economy, great power conflicts are said to be genuine threats primarily because in the long run repressive regimes with algorithmically planned economies could match the growth rates of more democratic regimes and thus keep up with military investments.