AI and the balance of power
Energy is essential to life. And to progress. Throughout history, human evolution has revolved around mastering energy. Each major leap in energy control has reshaped civilisations, economies, and the balance of global dominance.
The first energy revolution came with agriculture. By harnessing solar energy through domesticated crops and animals, societies could generate food surpluses. Egypt and other river-valley civilisations thrived, building monumental structures and complex bureaucracies on the back of this reliable energy source.
The second revolution arrived with the steam engine. Suddenly, we could convert coal into mechanical power for ships, trains, and factories. It was a revolution that was capital-intensive and required industrial infrastructure, so not everyone could be a part of it. But Britain was particularly well placed, and dominated the 19th century as the workshop of the world.
The third energy revolution was oil. Refined petroleum powered cars, tanks, airplanes, and entire economies. The United States, with its vast domestic reserves and technological prowess in exploration and refining, became the pre-eminent superpower of the 20th century. And then gradually global power (and wealth) pivoted towards the Middle East, with it huge resources.
Nuclear power represents another energy revolution. To those who were willing to embrace it, nuclear power brought abundant cheap energy. The first beneficiaries were the United States, the Soviet Union and he United Kingdom. The US, France, China, Russia and South Korea are still benefiting from it and achieving wealth and global influence as a result. For the UK, which abandoned nuclear power, it’s the opposite story.
Of course, there were many other factors at work, but broadly, the countries that first embraced these energy revolutions rose in power and status.
The fifth revolution is Artificial Intelligence. It is not exactly an energy revolution, but it is certainly energy hungry. Training and running large models demands enormous amounts of electricity. Yet unlike oil or early-stage nuclear energy, the energy sources powering AI — solar, wind, and smaller-scale nuclear sources— are becoming more widely accessible. This diffusion of energy technology means AI is unlikely to be monopolised by any single nation. The playing field is more open than many realise. And many of the countries that are presently comfortable economically and geopolitically are likely to find new players making them feel less so.
What makes AI truly transformative is not just energy, but its power to multiply ideas — much like paper did centuries ago. Invented in China as early as the 2 nd century BCE, paper allowed the unlimited storage and distribution of knowledge. Arguably, this breakthrough helped fuel the spread of Islam, the intellectual and scientific golden age of Moorish Spain, the printing press, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. New ideas proliferated, challenging old orders. In short, it was a highly disruptive technology.
Indeed, China guarded papermaking as a state secret precisely because its rulers understood its disruptive potential — just as they fear and restrict the internet today.
AI is another highly disruptive technology. It can synthesise vast amounts of information, generate new insights, accelerate scientific discovery, and democratise creativity. Ideas that once took decades to develop can now emerge in months or weeks. This multiplication of human ingenuity may prove more powerful than any previous technological leap. And it will have geopolitical and geofinancial effects.
The countries and companies that best harness AI’s ability to amplify ideas — while securing the diverse energy needed to run it — will shape the 21st century. The AI revolution won’t belong to one empire as past energy and industrial revolutions have been. It will belong to those nimble enough to ride the wave of decentralised energy and exponential ideas. Who will those be? Nobody knows, but it will surely be a much wider range of countries than the small number who dominate the world today.
Eamonn Butler