The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
Date and Time:
Monday, 31st August 2026
9:00 AM London Time
10:00 AM Central European Time
Location:
Live Online Webinar
Hosted by:
Hume Institute for Postgraduate Studies
Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Society
Speaker:
Dr David B. Roberts
Reader in International Security and Middle East Studies, King’s College London
Dr David B. Roberts is Reader in International Security and Middle East Studies at King’s College London, where he serves as Head of Professional Education and Enterprise within the School of Security Studies and leads the King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies.
He is the Founder and Commissioning Editor of Cambridge University Press’s Elements in Middle East Politics series. Before joining King’s College London, Dr Roberts directed the Gulf Office of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. His most recent monograph, Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies (2023), was published by Columbia University Press.
Overview:
Artificial intelligence is rapidly emerging as a structural force in international politics, reshaping the foundations of power in ways comparable to earlier transformative general-purpose technologies. This Distinguished Webinar will examine the geopolitics of AI from a global perspective, exploring how the concentration of computing power, data, and advanced semiconductor technologies is creating new hierarchies among states.
The session will consider how AI is intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China, while transforming military capabilities, intelligence, economic statecraft, and the geopolitical leverage derived from control over critical infrastructure and global supply chains.
As AI capability becomes an increasingly significant measure of national power, states are confronted with difficult strategic choices: aligning with one of the major technological powers, pursuing a strategy of hedging, or seeking greater technological sovereignty within an international system whose foundational technologies remain concentrated in a small number of competing states.
The Gulf region provides a particularly illuminating case study. Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are deploying sovereign investment to establish themselves as global AI hubs through the development of advanced data centres, negotiations over access to cutting-edge semiconductors, and strategic partnerships that increasingly draw them into the widening technological rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
Their experiences offer valuable insights into the strategic dilemmas facing ambitious middle powers and illuminate the contours of an emerging international order shaped by artificial intelligence.
Click below for more information and to download the poster: