Artificial Intelligence, Geopolitics, and the UN Security Council
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly relevant to the work of the Security Council, with the potential both to support and to undermine international peace and security. On the one hand, it can bolster efforts to prevent, manage, and resolve conflict, including by helping to identify patterns of violence, monitor ceasefires, and strengthen UN peacekeeping and mediation. On the other hand, its growing capabilities present a range of security risks. As a dual-use technology, AI can lower barriers to malicious cyber activity and make it easier to produce and disseminate convincing misinformation and disinformation at scale. It can also affect the conduct of armed conflict, including by compressing decision-making timelines and enabling increasingly autonomous weapons systems, raising questions about human oversight, accountability, and compliance with international humanitarian law.
More broadly, AI is reshaping geopolitical competition as demand grows for the resources and infrastructure needed to develop and deploy advanced AI systems. Access to these inputs and the supply chains that support them is becoming a source of strategic competition and potential geopolitical friction.
These developments warrant close consideration by the Security Council. Yet the Council’s engagement on AI has so far been sporadic and largely dependent on the priorities of individual members. Its consideration of AI-related risks across existing thematic and country-specific agenda items remains inconsistent. A more systematic approach could strengthen the Council’s ability to identify emerging risks, assess their implications for international peace and security, and consider appropriate responses.
This policy paper examines how AI is affecting geopolitics and international peace and security, and considers how the Security Council can engage more systematically on AI within its mandate and in complementarity with wider UN processes. The paper sets out practical options, including establishing an Informal Expert Group on Technology, Peace and Security. Such a group could provide Council members with a regular expert-level forum to examine how AI and other emerging technologies are affecting situations already on the Council’s agenda. It could also support horizon-scanning, draw more systematically on scientific and technical expertise from across and beyond the UN system, and help preserve institutional memory across presidencies and membership cycles.
