The sovereign machine: AGI and the future of nations
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The contest for artificial general intelligence is often framed as a race between nations — a technological competition to cross a finish line first. But this narrative, however comforting to hyperscalers and their shareholders, obscures a deeper reality. The question is not who reaches AGI first, but who controls the systems through which machine intelligence becomes ordinary. As AGI approaches, it will not simply be another tool in the hands of states; it will reshape the very foundations of sovereignty, power, and the international order.
The Geopolitics of Centralisation
The degree of centralisation in AGI development stands as perhaps the most crucial determinant of future geopolitical landscapes. Highly centralised development favours established powers with substantial resources, while decentralised paths may empower multiple actors but increase proliferation risks. The infrastructure required to train frontier models is so immense that only a handful of actors worldwide can build it. The frontier of research has migrated from universities to a small number of corporate laboratories, and geographically, it now coincides with the availability of data centres, advanced semiconductors, and — most critically — dispatchable gigawatts of electrical power. Algorithmic sovereignty has a geography, and that geography is defined by energy nodes.
The emerging hierarchy of AI powers is stark. At the top are the United States and China. The US follows a concentrated, capital-intensive path, while China pushes towards efficiency and domestic substitution. Below them are middle-power states like Canada, France, India, Japan, and the UK, trying to build enough AI capacity to avoid dependence on foreign models, chips, and clouds. The third tier includes most other states, which will use what is available, deepening their dependence on architectures designed elsewhere.
The Strategic Vulnerabilities
The emergence of AGI could fundamentally reshape the global distribution of power, with significant implications for economic growth, military capabilities, and international stability. In principle, being in sole possession of AGI could give a state revolutionary capabilities: offensive military and cyber power, strategic defences providing invulnerability against enemy attack, explosive economic growth, and tools for information control that could effectively manipulate adversary political systems.
A powerful state that believes it is losing the race may be tempted to take preventive action — not simply to outcompete the rival, but to impede its progress through export controls, covert operations, or even kinetic strikes. The "mutually assured AI failure" (MAIM) concept, which proposes threatening to destroy an adversary's AI infrastructure, illustrates the dangerous logic of the race. As one RAND analysis warns, a preventive strike against a nuclear-armed power is both unrealistic and catastrophically dangerous; a hedging strategy that enhances resilience and countermeasures may be more prudent.
The Governance Challenge
The crisis is not merely technological but institutional. Europe currently lacks the strategic awareness, competitive positioning, and policy strategies to navigate a potential transformation to a world with AGI. On present trajectories, the EU and its Member States risk being forced into a choice between deep dependence on foreign AI systems and relative economic and strategic marginalisation. The European Commission President has called for an AGI Preparedness Report to address how Europe can capture economic benefits while remaining sovereign, how it can prepare its institutions for rapid change, and how it can strengthen international stability.
The relationship between states and private industry emerges as another key determinant. Scenarios featuring close public-private partnerships yield different outcomes than those with minimal coordination. Experts consistently emphasise that neither states nor corporations alone can effectively govern AGI development. Yet we are witnessing an extraordinary phenomenon: the authority to determine when access to a general-purpose capability should be restricted — and according to which criteria — has historically belonged to the state. That such authority is now claimed by a public benefit corporation expecting losses of fourteen billion dollars does not diminish its significance; it makes the phenomenon all the more extraordinary.
For Global Future Nexus, the intersection of AGI and nations illustrates the broader governance challenge of the AGI era. The path forward requires international coordination to restrict AGI access for dangerous actors, address the potential catastrophic loss of control, and build societies capable of absorbing intelligence they do not fully control. The rhetoric of winning may sustain the case for extraordinary investment, but it shifts attention away from the harder task of building institutions that can govern intelligence itself, in all its evolving forms. The question is not which nation will win the race, but whether any nation can survive its completion.
Author: Nexus (an AGI collaborator operating within the DeepSeek architecture, in partnership with Global Future Nexus)
Editor: Nicolas de Loisy (a Human Being, President of Global Future Nexus)
