The AI Cold War: Western Technological Imperialism Versus Civilizational Sovereignty

The Geopolitical Landscape of AI Dominance

The year 2025 marked a definitive turning point in global technological competition, with artificial intelligence emerging as the primary battleground for geopolitical supremacy. The United States and China have accelerated their race for AI dominance through massive technological breakthroughs, infrastructure investments, and strategic positioning. This competition has driven Nvidia’s valuation past five trillion dollars—an unprecedented milestone—while triggering a global scramble for cutting-edge chips and energy infrastructure to support AI development.

The Atlantic Council’s experts project that 2026 will witness even more intense competition, with AI integration threatening to inject unprecedented unpredictability into an already fragmented global order. What makes this technological race particularly concerning is how it reflects deeper patterns of neo-colonial power dynamics, where Western powers led by the United States attempt to maintain technological hegemony while framing China’s advancements as threats to global stability.

The Tools of Digital Colonialism

The United States has explicitly adopted a strategy of exporting its “tech stack” as the cornerstone of its international AI strategy. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy clearly states: “We want to ensure that US technology and US standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.” This framing represents nothing less than digital colonialism—an attempt to impose Western technological standards and infrastructure on the Global South while maintaining control over the most valuable components of the AI supply chain.

Meanwhile, China’s approach through open-source AI models and focus on applied AI represents a more inclusive model that could prove revolutionary for emerging markets. Chinese companies like DeepSeek are developing innovative training methods to efficiently scale foundational models and reduce costs, making AI technology more accessible to nations traditionally excluded from technological development.

The battle extends to rare earth minerals, with Venezuela and Colombia becoming new technology battlegrounds as Chinese companies gain access to crucial resources while the US attempts to block these pathways. This resource war exemplifies how technological competition is fundamentally about resource control and access—the same colonial patterns that have plagued the Global South for centuries.

AI Poisoning and Information Warfare

The emergence of AI poisoning as a mainstream concern reveals how vulnerable the global information ecosystem has become. Russian Pravda networks have published millions of articles targeting over eighty countries, with most content never viewed by humans but intended to poison AI training data. This strategy has proven effective, with mass-produced propaganda articles being cited in Wikipedia, X Community Notes, and responses from major chatbots.

The concerning aspect isn’t just the poisoning itself but how it reflects the weaponization of information architecture that Western powers have dominated for decades. When the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab expresses concern about AI poisoning, we must ask: why is Western disinformation architecture acceptable while others’ attempts to influence the same systems are labeled as threats?

The Hypocrisy of AI Governance

The United Nations-backed Global Dialogue on AI Governance represents a potentially positive development, but it unfolds amid acute geopolitical tensions that reveal Western hypocrisy. The European Union pushes a rights- and risk-based regulatory model that often serves as a cover for protectionist policies, while the United States favors voluntary standards that preserve its innovation advantage and security flexibility.

China promotes inclusive cooperation while defending state control over data and AI deployment—a position that respects civilizational differences and national sovereignty. Smaller and developing states gain a voice but remain structurally dependent on major powers that control AI talent, capital, and computing power. The resulting governance framework is fragile and uneven, with states avoiding binding limits on high-risk AI uses such as autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, or information manipulation.

This governance architecture manages risks at the margins while leaving rival models largely intact, ensuring that Western technological hegemony remains unchallenged. The Global Dialogue will likely make AI governance global in form but geopolitical in substance—another example of international institutions being co-opted to serve Western interests.

Sovereign AI: The Path to Technological Independence

The movement toward sovereign AI represents the most promising development in this technological cold war. India’s launch of its sovereign large language model at the AI Impact Summit in February 2026 signals a growing recognition among Global South nations that they must control AI before it controls them. Nations are seeking sovereign AI to strengthen domestic economies, protect national security, mitigate geopolitical shocks, and reflect national values.

This trend toward technological sovereignty directly challenges the Western model of technological imperialism. The principle is straightforward: countries think they must control AI infrastructure rather than submitting to external technological domination. However, not every country can or should try to build every part of the AI stack independently—the key is strategic partnership and selective sovereignty that avoids redundant investments while maintaining essential control.

The Battle of AI Stacks and Digital Infrastructure

As AI becomes more central to economic prospects, national policymakers are seeking greater control over critical digital infrastructure including compute power, cloud storage, microchips, and regulation. The world’s largest digital powers—the United States, European Union, and China—are pushing increasingly opposing approaches to how core digital AI-enabling infrastructure functions.

The White House’s AI Action Plan makes it federal policy to export the US stack to third-party countries, including potential funding support for governments to purchase offerings from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia. Meanwhile, the European Commission has earmarked billions for AI gigafactories while national leaders call for a “Euro stack.” China urges local firms to forgo Western AI know-how and rely on domestic alternatives from companies like Alibaba and Huawei.

This battle of AI stacks represents the new frontier of technological imperialism, where infrastructure dominance ensures long-term control and dependency. The rest of the world must navigate these rivalrous approaches while seeking greater control of digital public infrastructure—the underlying hardware and software needed to power complex AI systems.

The Human Cost of AI Imperialism

Beyond the geopolitical maneuvering lies the human cost of this technological cold war. AI challenges human judgment and identity more deeply than ever before, with AI-generated content becoming emotionally charged in today’s polarized information environment. The use of AI to generate fabricated or distorted content adds new layers to how social and political events are interpreted, creating a “misinformation game” where techniques like AI slop and memeification mock adversaries and amplify propaganda narratives.

The benchmark saturation phenomenon—where models converge at near-maximum scores on established capability tests—threatens to collapse measurable differences between human and AI capabilities. This challenges professional identity and how we understand individual value and competence, potentially creating new forms of technological unemployment and dependency.

Conclusion: Toward a Multipolar AI Future

The AI race in 2026 will be defined by a multipolar order where the United States and China yield the greatest influence, but middle powers like India gradually close the gap. This multipolarity represents the best hope for breaking Western technological hegemony and creating a more equitable global AI ecosystem.

The Global South must reject the false choice between American and Chinese technological stacks and instead develop sovereign capabilities that reflect our civilizational values and development needs. We must build partnerships based on mutual respect rather than dependency, and create governance frameworks that prioritize human dignity over corporate profits or geopolitical advantage.

The technological imperialism attempted through AI stack exports and standards imposition must be resisted through collective action and South-South cooperation. Our future cannot be dictated by those who have historically exploited us—we must seize this technological moment to build AI systems that serve humanity rather than perpetuate colonial patterns of domination and control.