Artificial intelligence is becoming one of the defining infrastructures of the twenty-first century. Recent developments make this increasingly clear. The United Nations released the first report of its Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, laying the foundations for a permanent scientific institution to inform global AI governance. NATO reaffirmed artificial intelligence as a core enabler of future defence capabilities and operational readiness. At the same time, governments from Washington to Riyadh continued investing billions in AI infrastructure, recognising that compute, models and data have become strategic assets. These are not isolated policy developments. Together, they reveal a deeper transformation: artificial intelligence is becoming one of the fundamental infrastructures of international order.

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International order has always been sustained not only by balances of power but by the infrastructures that enable states to govern, trade, communicate, defend themselves and cooperate. The railways and telegraph networks of the nineteenth century compressed time and space, allowing empires to coordinate administration, commerce and military power across continents. Industrial production transformed the balance of power, while oil and electricity underpinned the geopolitical order of the twentieth century. The internet then rewired global commerce, communication and diplomacy. Artificial intelligence belongs in this historical lineage. It is no longer simply another technology to regulate or another industry to promote. It is becoming a foundational infrastructure upon which states, markets and societies increasingly depend.

International Relations has always evolved alongside changes in the sources of power. Classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau understood power largely through military capability and statecraft. Kenneth Waltz shifted attention to the distribution of capabilities across the international system, while Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye demonstrated that institutions and complex interdependence could themselves become sources of influence. Perhaps the most enduring insight came from Susan Strange, who argued that the deepest form of power is structural: the ability to shape the systems within which others operate rather than simply influence individual decisions. Her four structures of power, security, production, finance and knowledge, remain strikingly relevant. Artificial intelligence increasingly cuts across each of them. It is transforming military capability, reorganising production, reshaping financial systems through automation and........

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