The growing gap between rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and inadequate verification mechanisms has created several challenges for the technology. In this context, global AI governance has become a central topic of discussion in the tech world. However, the discourse around AI focuses primarily on how the technology will be regulated. The central problem of global AI governance is no longer whether AI should be regulated, but whether states possess the power to regulate the actors and infrastructures on which they increasingly depend.  

The international system has begun responding swiftly to evolving AI dynamics. Notably, the UN Global Digital Compact has established a framework for digital cooperation. The General Assembly has created the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, along with a Dialogue on AI Governance. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has moved towards an enforceable risk-based regulation through the AI Act. Likewise, the Council of Europe has also launched the first internationally binding treaty on AI. These initiatives are a step in the right direction. However, they lack a coherent global regime or direction, which impacts their effectiveness.  

As the latest initiatives show, the U.S. relies on targeted export controls on advanced chips, voluntary frameworks, and a pro-innovation approach that preserves U.S. dominance. China, on the other hand, favors a state-driven approach, built around controls on generative AI. The EU, by contrast, prioritizes enforceable rules for high-risk and general-purpose AI, along with strong fundamental rights protection. The emerging AI order is therefore not one model, but several operating simultaneously. This fragmentation is not accidental. It reflects competing power struggles among national interests. In such an environment, the search for a global AI governance appears misguided.  

Future AI governance is likely to mirror a hybrid model of international finance or trade regimes. Against this backdrop, private companies remain incredibly powerful, given their monopoly over data, models, computing power, and expertise, which are concentrated in a handful of private companies. This trend creates a governance paradox. Governments aim to regulate the private sector while remaining excessively dependent on it, creating a capacity challenge.  

These trends point to three prominent developments for the future. Regulatory fragmentation is likely to intensify as rival technological blocs establish incompatible standards. Ultimately, technologically backward states opt accordingly. Second is procedural multilateralism, where states agree on universal principles, but actual power remains concentrated among a few powerful entities. The third option is that states retain their distinct regulatory systems but agree on some conditions. These scenarios and trends are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, with different approaches emerging across sectors. As a result, the landscape is expected to remain complex. Whichever the scenario, the technological ecosystems are likely to become tools of influence vis-à-vis cloud access, advanced semiconductors, data centers, export policies, global supply chains, digital infrastructure, and divergent AI standards.  

For the Global South, the ongoing trend poses multifaceted challenges. The foremost is structural dependence. While these states may draft their own AI policies, they will remain dependent on foreign technology. Likewise, consensus among states remains elusive. This becomes increasingly complex in a future environment where AI governance may become more infrastructural. This might involve the development of measurable controls. The key challenge for the Global South is not mere exclusion; it is participation without agenda-setting influence. In addition, AI innovation moves much faster than regulation, creating a governance lag and adding to the challenges. The main priority is to define a meaningful role for itself in this environment. Its main priority should be to integrate into regional frameworks, shared datasets, and coordinated diplomatic moves.  

The international organizations have a limited but important part in global governance. They can expand their role by laying the ground for common scientific assessments, incident-sharing mechanisms, and capacity building. The approach should complement existing frameworks while acknowledging divergent national systems. Fostering coordination where political consensus allows remains central for relevant international organizations.  

AI Governance in the contemporary era is complex. As the ongoing developments suggest, the future of AI governance will not be manifested as a single regulator or a universal AI rulebook. Instead, it will emerge as a highly contested polycentric order, characterized by an environment where laws, norms, technical standards, and UN/international organization-led coordination overlap. In this context, the U.S., China, and the EU will continue to assert their dominance and institutionalize their edge into rules and norms. In parallel, countries in the Global South are likely to resist and consolidate their own influence. The pivotal challenge in such an environment will not be whether AI is governed. Instead, it will be whose security interests and priorities prevail in the technological age. Hence, the tussle will be to convert technological capability into institutional influence. 

Shaza Arif is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Islamabad, casss.thinkers@casstt.com. The views in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of NIDS.

The Politics of Global AI Governance was originally published on Global Security Review.

The national security strategy outlines the president’s strategic vision and serves as the closest approximation to a U.S. grand strategy. It orients the POTUS’ goals and associated efforts in foreign and defense policy within the executive branch and informs Congress of the POTUS’ priorities and direction. The NSS declares what is important to America—its national interests, goals, and priorities—and emphasizes how the President envisions the use of America’s diplomatic, informational, economic, military, and technological instruments of power to achieve or service those interests. The 2025 National Security Strategy is not the most comprehensive ever produced; that distinction belongs to the President’s first NSS in 2017.

The 2025 NSS identifies three core national interests that collectively shape U.S. strategy. First, it is the “balance of power,” which focuses on U.S. security and emphasizes preventing any rival from gaining regional or global dominance that could threaten U.S. sovereignty or freedom of action. Second, a predisposition to non-interventionism, which reflects a desire to limit U.S. involvement in long-lasting or discretionary foreign wars, emphasizing restraint, burden-sharing, and deterrence over “fruitless ‘nation-building’ wars.” Third, economic security, a key strategic goal, which requires the United States to maintain its position as the world’s leading economy through balanced trade, secure access to essential resources, reindustrialization, energy security, and mutually beneficial economic ties with other countries. Collectively, these interests reveal a strategy that prioritizes American strength and strategic stability over “forever wars,” while recognizing that economic vitality and security are inseparable from national power.

Only a strong nuclear deterrent will ensure these core national interests are both protected and advanced. The core idea of 2025 NSS is “peace through strength,” asserting credible military power and the fear it projects as the best safeguard against conflict amid geopolitical turbulence and great-power competition. This NSS espouses a more realist disposition, unapologetically relying on deterrence to project strength in a world fraught with nuclear weapon expansion. President Reagan reminded us in 1986 that “Nations do not mistrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other.”

The 2025 NSS clearly states on page three, “We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent.” This is the engine of a U.S. balance of power policy—acting to prevent other states or coalitions of states from achieving dominant power over the U.S., thereby maintaining a balance between stability and security. Moreover, the NSS emphasizes that deterrence depends on maintaining U.S. military “overmatch.” An abundant, modern, and resilient nuclear arsenal not only provides the military advantage sought but also does so at a lower cost than a conventionally armed force with equivalent destructive capability.

Next, instead of open-ended overseas wars or nation-building, the 2025 NSS frames military engagement as justified only when U.S. core interests are directly threatened. This predisposition to non-interventionism requires maximum deterrence strategies to prevent regional conflicts from escalating into large-scale wars that could “come to our shores, [which] is bad for American interests.”

Moreover, empowering and enabling allies and partners—removing imperial perceptions of American behavior—by letting them lead, investing in their capabilities, and treating them as co-architects rather than subcontractors signals that America is not trying to dominate outcomes but to share responsibility. This creates economic value through burden sharing and arms sales, while fostering an equally shared commitment to security goals and deterrence. Capacity building is not short-sighted; it is a long-term investment in partnerships that advance the balance of power without relying solely on American taxpayers.

The 2025 NSS further stresses that economic security and vitality—one of President Trump’s central goals—requires a sustained focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. By creating the strategic space for economic expansion, successful deterrence enables reinvestment in the very capabilities that preserve it. This dynamic not only offers a long-term sustainment pathway for America’s nuclear deterrent force but also reinforces deterrence as the essential buffer between competition and conflict.

Finally, the NSS contends that durable deterrence rests as much on economic and technological dominance as on military power. By preserving America’s lead in high-tech innovation, increasing its industrial capacity, ensuring energy dominance, and securing reliable access to critical minerals, the United States reduces adversaries’ incentives to challenge it militarily while incentivizing a realignment of countries toward U.S. interests. At the same time, the strategy underscores that economic strength alone is insufficient; it must be coupled with a military that is rigorously recruited, trained, equipped, and modernized to remain the world’s most lethal and technologically advanced deterrent force, protecting U.S. interests and preventing conflict.

The 2025 NSS is far from “business as usual.” It embraces sovereignty, fairness, and balance of power, asserting that peace rests on strength—not wishful thinking, unchecked interventionism, or self-imposed restraint. The strategy states that “in the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict,” thereby framing deterrence not simply as a matter of nuclear or conventional force posture, but as the cumulative product of industrial capacity, innovation, and sustained national investment. Within this logic lies a clear call to expand and emplace a robust, modern, flexible, and resilient nuclear arsenal capable of deterring nuclear attack, averting major war, and safeguarding America’s national interests.

Col. Curtis McGiffin (U.S. Air Force, Ret.) is Vice President for Education at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and visiting professor at Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. Views expressed in this article are his own.

The Case for Deterrence: What the 2025 NSS Gets Right was originally published on Global Security Review.