Sovereign AI in the Developing Global South: Volume III – Conflicts, Insurgencies, and Algorithmic Warcraft vs. Statecraft
Abstract
Artificial intelligence is collapsing the historical separation between statecraft and warcraft. This third volume of the series on Sovereign AI in the developing Global South examines how algorithmic systems are restructuring state authority in domestic governance and armed conflict. It first analyses "algorithmic statecraft": biometric digital public infrastructure and the risk of function creep, with India's Aadhaar and Kenya's Huduma Namba as cases, and predictive policing as a form of actuarial justice that can codify structural discrimination. The article then turns to "algorithmic warcraft": AI decision support systems used for target generation in Gaza, automation bias and the "triage trap" that hollow out meaningful human control, and bias in military AI. It traces the democratisation of lethality through commercial and AI-enabled drones in Myanmar, Sudan, Libya and the Sahel, Bangladesh's border-security modernisation in response to regional spillover, and generative AI as an instrument of cognitive warfare. It closes with the fractured diplomacy of the Global South in the UN Group of Governmental Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems, and argues that sovereign resilience requires contextualised AI frameworks under strict civilian oversight together with a coordinated push for binding international norms.
