Intelligence and Power — The Military, Surveillance, and Society

Through the story so far, we have followed AI as it transformed into a resource in the struggle for economic supremacy. Data, semiconductors, foundation models, regulation, and the splitting of technological spheres — all of it, in the end, was a competition over who could put the smarter machine in their hands, and faster. But intelligence does not stop at generating wealth. It bends people to obedience, defeats enemies, and moves public opinion — in other words, it transforms into power itself. In Episode 9, we look at how AI is redrawing the strength of nations and the shape of society.

Who Pulls the Trigger?

The battlefield is where AI poses its sharpest, and heaviest, questions.

Drones fly through the sky, lock onto targets, and strike — a scene that has already become reality in conflicts around the world. The question is how far the autonomy of the machine should be allowed to extend in that judgment. From a stage where a human confirms the target and pulls the trigger, to a stage where the machine itself selects and attacks a target — the weapons that cross this line are called lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), and the international community has debated them for a long time.

The heart of the debate comes down to one old phrase: “meaningful human control.” Should the final decision to take a life be entrusted to a machine? Who bears responsibility for a malfunction or a misidentification? The smarter the machine grows, the harder the answers become.

In 2023, nations tried to answer this question with a framework. The Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, led by the United States, is reported to have won the endorsement of many countries. It was not a legally binding prohibition but a pragmatic first step: to begin by sharing a notion of “responsible use.”

The Border Between Real and Fake Dissolves

Beyond the battlefield, AI is quietly changing the nature of power as well. A prime example is disinformation and deepfakes produced by generative AI.

Once, photographs, audio, and video were “evidence.” But now that machines can synthesize a face and voice indistinguishable from the real person, we are becoming unable to take what we see at face value. Statements never made, events that never happened, people who never existed — an age has arrived in which these can be produced with a precision indistinguishable from the genuine, in vast quantities, and at almost no cost.

This is not merely a matter of fraud or mischief. It is a power capable of shaking the foundations of society — elections, diplomacy. The concern that generative AI will be used as a tool to manipulate public opinion and inflame division within rival nations has been raised again and again across many countries. Intelligence moves the human heart without firing a gun — and governments and platforms alike are being pressed to respond to that force.

A State That Reads Faces, a Society That Measures Efficiency

The domain where AI is most intimately bound to power is surveillance.

Facial recognition technology instantly matches a face captured by a street camera against a database. Other technologies trace a particular person’s movements through vast amounts of footage. These can aid criminal investigation and counterterrorism, yet they can also become tools for keeping citizens under constant watch. As we saw in Episode 4 of this series, AI grows by feeding on enormous amounts of data. And human behavior is the richest source of data of all.

How surveillance technology is judged is sharply divided by a society’s values. There is the view that a degree of surveillance is acceptable for the sake of public order and safety, and there is the deeply rooted position that it is a danger threatening freedom and privacy. In fact, the strength of regulation over how facial recognition may be used reportedly differs considerably from one country and region to another, and that very difference becomes a mirror reflecting what each society holds dear.

As Kai-Fu Lee argued in AI Superpowers, the competition over AI is not a contest of technical capability alone. Under what values that power is wielded — that choice is what shapes the future of each society.

Work and Daily Life Are Remade

Finally, let us touch on the change that touches the most people: the transformation of labor.

Generative AI writes prose, draws pictures, produces code, and responds to questions. Part of the intellectual work once thought to be “something only humans can do” is now being taken over by machines. This is both a threat and a hope.

In a world where smart machines can be had cheaply, a new gap may open between the individuals, companies, and nations that can wield them well and those that cannot — and this concern, too, has become an issue every country faces. A gap in intelligence translates directly into a gap in wealth and power. That AI is a source of power means precisely this.

The military, information, surveillance, labor — in every domain we look at, AI has long since outgrown the frame of a “convenient tool” and is redrawing the very strength of nations and the order of society. Hope and fear have always been two sides of the same coin.

Up to here we have traced the long road by which AI became a resource, an industry, a target of regulation, and finally transformed into power. But one last question remains in this story. If the intelligence of machines should one day surpass the human itself — where then will supremacy, and humanity, be headed? What waits beyond may be the final race of all — the contest over an intelligence that surpasses the human.