In the academic literature there is a scarcity of studies regarding the impact of AI leak on national security. ‘AI Leak’ is an emerging concept which refers to the unintentional release or unauthorized access to sensitive machine learning models. A recent example was the leaked pre-trained model called ‘LLAMA’ which was developed by Meta’s (Facebook). The purpose of LLAMA is to generate human-like language processing for use cases such as virtual chatbot, translation or sentiment analysis. LLAMA model was accidentally made public by a Meta employee who uploaded it to a public GitHub repository, making it available for anyone to access and download. A leak could expose Meta’s proprietary language processing technology and expertise that could be used for competitors or adversaries to develop applications for intelligence gathering or spreading misinformation. AI, including large language models (LLMs), is considered by countries as a key enabling technology driving operational gains both for defense and commercial purposes. Recently released ASPI’s new Critical Technology Tracker reveals that that China has built a global lead relative to the US in 37 out of 44 crucial technology fields including in AI. The US Department of Defense (US DoD) is working on its own LLM, known as the ‘Gargantua’ program. The goal of the Gargantua program is to create LLMs that are capable of processing and understanding large amounts of unstructured text data, including potentially sensitive military data. The Gargantua program is still in development, but the DoD has stated that it sees significant potential for LLMs in a range of military applications, such as intelligence gathering, situational awareness, and decision making. My article explores a hypothetical scenario of Gargantua AI Leak in the context of security dilemma. First coined by John Herz in 1950, the security dilemma describes how the actions that one state takes to make itself more secure, such as the adoption of AI, tend to make other states less secure and lead them to respond in kind. I explore how such a leak could differ from previously known cyber leaks. Further, I investigate what security challenges such a leak poses on the US DoD / NATO Alliance both from the perspective of state and non-state actors. Finally, I explore the potential mitigation solutions and emerging regulatory strategies to address AI leaks more generally and in the context of LLMs for national security.
The major emphasis of great power competition has shifted significantly over history. Today, there is widespread disagreement on whether economic or military aims are more important in the sphere of great power competition. The three global superpowers, the United States, China, and Russia, engage in a wide variety of strategic ambitions, including economic influence, military supremacy, territorial domination, and ideological leadership. It is difficult to say which of these endeavors is more important because each has a significant influence on the global power structure. Economic influence is crucial because it determines access to resources, markets, and critical sectors, all of which are critical to economic growth and national security. Military power is also important because it offers deterrent and projection capabilities, which protect national interests and alliances. Nonetheless, the significance of these many competitions may vary depending on each state’s specific aims and circumstances. By evaluating where these nations have invested the most in the previous two decades, we may acquire a sense of the sectors they prioritize.
This study aims to understand how regional powers construct and maintain their autonomies in the sphere of interest under the great power competition in the region. Although, after the Cold War, the international system has evolved to a uni-multipolar structure, it is still dominated by great powers. Regional powers have been threatened and controlled implicitly or explicitly by them. They establish regional multilateral institutions to decrease great powers’ influence while increasing cooperation in maintaining regional autonomy. In this study, as the consensual hegemon of South America, Brazil’s foreign policy towards the region is analyzed, and how the US, the historically dominant, and China, the new great power, impact Brazil’s autonomy is questioned. During the power transition from the US to China, Brazil found room for manoeuvre for its leadership. Brazil’s changing autonomy between 2000-2018 (with a specific focus on after 2008) is examined using the process-tracing technique in a qualitative case study analysis. The impact of great powers on Brazil’s autonomy during this period is analyzed through interviews with foreign policymakers. As an illustrative case, understanding changing Brazil’s regional autonomy under the shadow of US-China relations will guide us in other regional powers’ interactions with great powers regarding regional politics.
The moment GPC as a word flashes, IR enthusiasts are thrown to dwell into the sea of theories that have shaped our understanding of GPC. But what if these theories were to be understood in context of each other and then GPC in context of these theories. Realists, Liberalists and Constructivists are all pointing at the same picture from different angle. This paper tries to take a step back by changing the very picture that these theories have tried to understand. The paper tries to explore the complexities and outcomes of GPC in a world that would have been different. For majority of the time, the power chase has been considered given, and the analysis is always built upon it. This paper is a modest attempt to understand the formation of GPC itself from a changed perspective, with looking at states from a constructivist’s lens, and applying the model of realism and liberalism along with major notions of GPC to comprehend whether the Great Power Competition was always inevitable or is it just how a particular type of human understanding unfolded it in a certain way, and there is always a way to undo it.
Does China successfully wield leadership of UN agenccies to further its own national interests of an alternative global order? We test these expectations to assess whether a rising power uses the position for formal influence—to reward like-minded states—or informal influence—to accumulate prestige.
To probe for formal influence, we leverage a comparative case study approach of 11 different IOs, combining original data collection of 12,481 IO country-projects from 1988-2022 and an ethnographic case study of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). We also conduct an elite conjoint survey experiment with IO staff to test the mechanisms of formal executive influence via a ‘pleasing the principal’ mechanism in which IO staff anticipate a leader’s preferences based on nationality cues, or an ‘agenda-setting mechanism,’ in which leaders overtly indicate their preferences. To examine informal influence, we conduct a survey experiment on representative samples of the public in the US and Brazil to examine whether partnerships between Chinese leaders and IOs enhance China’s image, again leveraging the case of the ITU.
These results have substantial implications for the way that we interpret China’s motivations toward the international order, the independence of IOs, and the broader vitality of IOs in the midst of power transitions.
Note: I do not have travel funds, and would require travel support to be able to participate.
Historians of U.S. foreign relations have broadly identified nationalism as a significant driver of the U.S. expansionist turn in the Asia-Pacific towards the end of the 19th century. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of a particular form of nationalism – economic nationalism – to the dynamics of interstate competition that made this expansion possible. This article argues about the centrality of economic nationalism in this process, which increased great power rivalry in the region between the United States and Japan, Germany, and Russia. The events that followed laid the ground for the subsequent long-term U.S. engagement and expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
Please note: I will be at IPSI 2023 (Bridging the Gap initiative) in Washington DC between 11 and 15 June included. I am also scheduled to present at SHAFR on 16 June but I would prioritise the CPGC workshop.
With improved transatlantic relations, US-China great power competition has spread to various areas and fields, ranging from critical technologies to supply chains to hypersonic missiles to nuclear missile silos and trade. Given the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the European Union (EU) is concerned about the growing Russia-China no-limit partnership and China’s ambiguous stance on the conflict. With EU’s relationship with Russia and China are on a swing, growing Russia-China nexus has made the West-China great power competition tortuous. Given as the Ukraine conflict’s impact grows with China becoming the EU’s strategic rival, it pushed EU members to diversify their reliance and relationship with Russia and China in order to protect their national interests. As China and Russia emphasise ‘indivisible security’ and ‘legitimate concerns’ to protect and promote their national and strategic interests, it is interpreted as an attempt to change the global order. While NATO continues to provide umbrella protection in Europe, it has avoided direct involvement in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China. Thus, it will be a strenuous task for Europe to unite and achieve strategic autonomy, counter the Russian and Chinese threats, and secure its interests on the continent and in the Indo-Pacific region.
With the return of Great Power Competition, naturally, attention turns to critical areas where this competition will manifest. I argue that technology has already begun to form the foreground in this great power competition, and as such, competition in this area will set the tone for the future of this relationship. This competition can be split into two areas. First, there is competition in terms of hardware, such as micro-chips and spy-balloons. Second, there is competition over software, such as artificial intelligence, social media, and cyber-warfare. Technology has formed the foreground in this Great Power Competition because the rules and norms of behaviour in this area are typically newer, less solidified, and weaker than in areas such as economic policy, trade policy, and conventional warfare.
Due to emerging great power competition, international production networks have become regarded by states as sources of vulnerability which amplify the risks of asymmetric dependence on adversarial powers. Consequently, the US, China, the EU and East Asian states have made attempts to reduce their reliance on production outsourced to rivals.
These attempts to reshore production and ‘decouple’ from adversaries have yielded limited results so far for four reasons, which are often overlooked in the International Relations literature.
First, the differences in competitive advantages between developed economies and China mean that competing great powers possess heterogenous coercive capabilities in different economic sectors, limiting their ability to weaponize interdependence.
Second, the fragmented and networked nature of manufacturing constrains the degree to which states can influence profit-seeking non-state actors in order to shape the international economic architecture.
Third, decoupling would require a significant reorganization of the domestic economies of great powers, which faces significant political economy constraints.
Fourth, decoupling carries significant second order costs for great powers’ allies. East Asian and Eastern European states have based their economic development on participation in international production networks dependent on Chinese inputs and demand. Consequently, the disruption of these networks poses a challenge to their welfare and their value as allies.
This paper presents empirical evidence to support the first two hypotheses and discusses how the empirical data manifests in the political constraints described in the third and fourth hypothesis.
How has great power nuclear competition evolved in the post-Cold War period? Significant attention has been focused on the role of advanced qualitative improvements to major powers’ nuclear arsenals. Yet, in many ways these views erroneously draw on lessons from the Cold War, which was unique due to the presence of only two major nuclear actors and to the absence of cross-cutting dyads within alliance blocs. The emerging nuclear landscape is complicated by the addition of new nuclear actors, which has exacerbated rivalries by introducing cross-cutting strategic dyads. This paper illustrates these dynamics via a case study of the emerging competition between North and South Korea, and its effect on the Sino-American nuclear relationship. North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has intensified Seoul’s security concerns, leading it to pursue counterforce capabilities. Relatedly, the US has invested in homeland missile defense to allay South Korean concerns over the credibility of its extended deterrence guarantee. While these efforts are driven by developments in North Korea, advances in South Korean capabilities also create threats to China’s nuclear arsenal. This new era of nuclear competition is driven less by bilateral qualitative arms racing and rather by new actors’ acquisition of long-existing systems.
Weaponized interdependence (WI), or the exploitation of networked asymmetries for strategic advantage, has come to dominate the strategic thinking of the European Union (EU), China, and the United States (US). Declaring the importance of cyber capacity building (CCB) as a strategic tool, they have each invested heavily in the digital development of network ‘peripheries’—especially African states. Conventional wisdom holds that cyber capacity building projects build resilience against networked asymmetries and thus reduce the recipient’s vulnerability to WI risks. Given that the EU, US, and China have allegedly weaponized interdependence for their own advantage in cyberspace, it seems disadvantageous for them to fund programmes aimed at reducing opportunities for WI gains. How do these powerful donors perceive CCB investments as shaping their strategic advantage? Building a rational choice model, the paper argues that, under supply-side competitive pressures, CCB projects are strategically useful for reconfiguring networked asymmetries in the donor’s favour. This logic is reflected in the current rollout of American, Chinese, and EU CCB initiatives for African states. Therefore, extant scholarship has underestimated how ‘networked peripheries’ have emerged as central sites of global geopolitical competition, with CCB programmes serving as tools for shaping the normative and structural conditions for strategic advantage.
This submission analyses Russian and Chinese perspectives on the US-centred “Liberal International Order” (LIO). Drawing on the work of scholars such as Ikenberry, we identify two features that make the LIO a unique type of Great Power network:
1. It is institutionalised to an unprecedented degree.
2. It rests on discernible shared normative foundations.
Russia and China are comparatively institutionally impoverished and cannot compete with the US in global structural power. In the Russo-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine draws support from over 40 countries. Russia has had practical support from only Belarus, Iran and North Korea. China’s strategy of controlling UN agencies through winning leadership posts by coercing smaller states is also losing ground..
There is no clear normative basis for Russian and Chinese Great Power policies. They lack the US’s international ‘friendship’ networks, as the Russian case in Ukraine highlights. Chinese support of Russia is a mission in exploiting Russia’s weakened position by extracting concessions over energy and access to military technology.
Thus the LIO is not fragile or degrading. Its relative strengths explain official Russian and Chinese antipathy. Both are ultimately fearful of its core institutional and normative strengths.
The rapid development of new business practices relying on algorithms and big data leads to the rise of the digital economy with great transformations. Personalised pricing, one of those practices, can be described as price differentiation for identical products or services at the same time based on information an undertaking holds about a potential consumer. As the implementation of this practice becomes possible, the legal authorities introduced regulations regarding the legal framework of this practice. However personalized pricing in terms of European Union (EU) competition law is far from clear. Besides, studies on the effects of personalized pricing on the market and consumer welfare show that the effects of this practice are ambiguous. Therefore, regulating personalised pricing as an ex-ante violation of EU competition law leads to deprivation of taking advantage of the positive effects of it on the market and consumer welfare. Personalised pricing can be used as abusive practice in many ways, but this paper examines the relation between personalised pricing and predatory pricing which is a violation of Article 102 TFEU. This issue has not received adequate attention in terms of EU competition law even though its importance to the functioning of competitive markets.
Some of the most understated factors in the study of conflict is the role of border changes. What do elites and citizens think of their country’s fate when their borders are being shrank? And just the opposite: how to set the ultimate territorial goals of a country when its elites and citizens notice that most disputes fall its way? This paper tries to shed light on the current war in Ukraine by zooming out and thinking more empirically about the fates of countries (mostly empires) which lost territory for good, compared to those which made territorial inroads. We zero in on countries whose political roots were built during revolutionary periods, and investigate how these roots-turned-capabilities can be exploited to produce collective outcomes such as wars (negative result) and poverty alleviation and literacy (good results). Territorial gains help cement not only leadership’s reputation but also its connection with society. Revolutionary nationalism is a strong recipe for societal change, but sometimes with the risk of territorial over-reach.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has not only shaken the foundations of the European security order, but will also have long-term repercussions on the future of international relations. While Ukraine is enjoying universal backing from Western states, Russia has received at least rhetorical support from its “strategic partner” China. Influential voices have cited this constellation as proof of a new global confrontation between democratic and authoritarian camps. In this article, we aim to sketch a more complex picture of the Sino-Russian partnership, as revealed by the war in Ukraine. Based on an analysis of Chinese and Russian official statements and expert commentaries published since shortly before the beginning of the war, we find that it is fundamentally shaped by three factors: a partial and short-term overlap of interests, an underdeveloped normative basis further challenged by Russia’s belligerent behavior, and a pronounced reactivity towards US security agency. Accordingly, closer Sino- Russian alignment is not based on ideological fraternity or a symptom of renewed systemic bipolarity in global politics. Viewing it as such is also a bad guideline for practical policy, as it ignores the differences in both countries’ attitudes towards the status quo of global order, and risks pushing them closer together in further challenges against it.
As Great Power Competition (GPC) intensifies, middle power’s strategic calculations ponder over their responses to the changing distribution of capabilities. In international relations, middle powers are referred to as “guardians of the balance of power, ” meaning that their external alignment (shifting weights) follows the principle of maintaining power balances in the system. However, middle power strategies empirically challenge this law-like generalisation, by steering their strategic weight in a direction that either erodes the existing power configuration or perpetuates the prevailing imbalances in the system. In other words, as GPC consolidates power shifts, middle powers, rather than responding as per the prescriptions flowing out of the “structural-realist framework” demonstrates foreign policy behaviour that cannot be easily boxed into the categories of balancing, bandwagoning, hedging, or neutrality. In this context, the paper tries to understand and explain the strategies of the middle powers amidst GPC by using the typological method to account for various circumstances and operating conditions glued via the working of two independent variables – security concerns and aspirations – to evaluate the foreign policy choices of the middle powers. By doing so, this paper will establish different operating logics for the middle powers by testing the theoretical underpinnings through the case study of France and India as the United States and China grapples with increased tension and the prospects of war. The study confines itself to the decade of the 2010s to evaluate how India and France exploited or safely navigated this turbulence. Following this, the paper concludes that middle powers are rarely concerned about the systemic outcome of balances; instead, they prefer changes in the existing distribution of capabilities anchored around their security interests and aspirations to improve their relative positioning vis-à-vis others to determine their strategies. At last, this research contributes to understanding the strategy of the middle powers that the existing theories neglect because of their focus on great powers.
China’s interaction with NATO in the post-Cold War era from 1991 onwards has taught Beijing valuable lessons in US management of complex security relations with allies. Since the first Opium War between Britain and China from 1939 to 1942, Chinese political authorities have adapted Western international strategies for protecting their interests to domestic practices. Coordination and dialogue with NATO during the liberal internationalist era offered opportunities for lessons in US alliance management that has encouraged revisiting its non-alignment stance designed to avoid entrapment in conflicts instigated by partners. NATO’s expeditionary wars confirmed to China that mutual defence commitments were too costly for a rising power still in need of stronger capabilities. By contrast, the transatlantic alliance’s unity of purpose in supporting Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion and NATO’s decision to go global to coordinate deterrence with like-minded partners in the Indo-Pacific has contributed to Beijing’s resolve to maintain its decades-long strategic partnership with Russia and use it as a platform for expanding its security foothold in the global South. In the era of strategic competition, China attempts to balance its non-aligned status with the need for enhanced security commitments to strategic partners to try to match its US peer competitor.