Artificial intelligence is increasingly reshaping geopolitical competition, not as a standalone capability, but as a multiplier of power, asymmetry, and escalation. This article examines how AI accelerates strategic dynamics by compressing decision timelines, amplifying influence operations, and blurring attribution across cyber, information, and economic domains.
Integrating perspectives from cybersecurity, digital forensics, and AI governance, the analysis shows how AI-enabled systems alter traditional assumptions of deterrence and proportionality, favouring actors able to exploit opacity, automation, and ambiguity. Power becomes less visible yet more pervasive, while accountability and response mechanisms struggle to keep pace with algorithmically accelerated operations.
The article argues that effective AI governance must be understood as strategic infrastructure, embedding forensic traceability, decision oversight, and institutional resilience into AI-enabled security and policy frameworks. Without such governance, AI risks transforming geopolitical rivalry into unmanaged escalation. The study concludes that governing AI is essential not only for technological control, but for maintaining stability in an increasingly automated international order.
Artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities are expanding strategic grey zones where traditional distinctions between peace and war, lawful and unlawful conduct, and human and machine agency increasingly dissolve. This article examines how AI-enabled cyber power operates below formal thresholds, enabling persistent influence, disruption, and escalation without clear attribution or declaration.
By integrating perspectives from cybersecurity, digital forensics, and AI governance, the analysis shows how automated systems compress decision timelines, fragment responsibility, and challenge existing legal and institutional frameworks. In these grey zones, power is exercised through optimisation, manipulation, and ambiguity rather than overt force, complicating accountability and response.
The article argues that effective governance must move beyond compliance-based approaches toward governance architectures capable of operating under uncertainty. Embedding forensic traceability, decision oversight, and human–machine accountability into AI-assisted operations is essential to limit escalation and preserve strategic stability. Without such governance, grey zones risk becoming the dominant terrain of conflict in an increasingly automated international order.
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