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The writer is a fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Cyber Policy Center. She is the author of ‘The Tech Coup’
President Donald Trump’s trade wars are teaching the world a harsh lesson: dependencies get weaponised. In the White House’s view, international trade is zero-sum. With his AI Action Plan promising “unchallenged” technological dominance a further ambition is clear. Will the rest of the world recognise that embracing US artificial intelligence offers Trump an even more potent tool for coercion?
Since his “liberation day” tariffs, the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive campaign to exact concessions from America’s trading partners. Decades of trade integration mean there is no easy path back to square one. Dependencies run deep and alternative markets, supply chains and flows of goods and services take time to develop.
With AI, there is not yet such global entanglement. So why would any country voluntarily hand more leverage to the White House?
AI is an ideological project for the Trump administration and the AI Action Plan lays out a clear blueprint for US technological hegemony. Its pillars focus on supercharging domestic AI development and adoption, aiming to yield economic benefits and prevent “woke” model use. This is the architecture it hopes the world will embrace.
More than previous technologies, AI systems create uniquely vulnerable dependencies. Algorithms are not transparent and can be manipulated to bias outputs — whether challenging antitrust rules or supporting protectionism. With a significant set of US tech chief executives pledging allegiance to this administration, the synergy between political and corporate agendas is clear. AI companies have even deployed team members in the US armed forces.
The weaponisation possibilities are extensive. Take the Cloud Act, which forces the disclosure of foreign data by domestic cloud providers, whose services dominate worldwide.
It is easy to see how tech can become an even greater bargaining chip in US foreign policy. As with steel or pharmaceuticals, Trump’s White House can simply impose a tariff on AI services or critical elements of the supply chain. The administration is already pushing the EU to weaken its Digital Services Act and considered leveraging tariffs to force a change to the UK’s online safety laws earlier this year.
What makes AI dependency particularly dangerous is its opacity. Unlike trade in physical goods, AI decision-making processes are often black boxes, making subtle manipulation nearly impossible to detect. These systems become deeply embedded in critical processes, with high replacement costs.
Many countries already have significant dependencies on US tech companies. Add AI and powerful lock-in effects would intensify. The rapid pace of its evolution makes it difficult for alternative suppliers to maintain competitive alternatives, adding chokepoint effects. With the integration of such technologies in infrastructure, defence and security systems, the stakes are high.
The Trump administration frames the AI race as a competition between democratic and authoritarian models. Yet this obscures a troubling reality: the gap between US and Chinese approaches to technological control is narrowing. Governance grows more authoritarian by the day in Trump’s America, with political interventions reaching individual company levels.
The window for convincing American partners to embrace “full stack” AI exports (where US companies sell access to platforms instead of products) is closing. Governments are learning from their trade war mistakes and investing in sovereign alternatives in the hope of avoiding critical dependencies. Ensuring transparency and security requirements and building in contractual protections against service termination might help in the short term, but coalitions with like-minded democracies to foster alternative AI ecosystems free from unilateral US policy change will be more sustainable.
The choice facing world leaders is not between US or Chinese AI dominance but between technological sovereignty and digital colonialism. Each trade confrontation should teach potential partners that today’s commercial relationships can become tomorrow’s coercive leverage.
Trade wars show how far the Trump administration is willing to go. The AI Action Plan offers the president the means to make that vision more vast and more permanent. The rest of the world should think twice before volunteering to take part.
The writer is a fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Cyber Policy Center. She is the author of ‘The Tech Coup’
President Donald Trump’s trade wars are teaching the world a harsh lesson: dependencies get weaponised. In the White House’s view, international trade is zero-sum. With his AI Action Plan promising “unchallenged” technological dominance a further ambition is clear. Will the rest of the world recognise that embracing US artificial intelligence offers Trump an even more potent tool for coercion?
Since his “liberation day” tariffs, the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive campaign to exact concessions from America’s trading partners. Decades of trade integration mean there is no easy path back to square one. Dependencies run deep and alternative markets, supply chains and flows of goods and services take time to develop.
With AI, there is not yet such global entanglement. So why would any country voluntarily hand more leverage to the White House?
AI is an ideological project for the Trump administration and the AI Action Plan lays out a clear blueprint for US technological hegemony. Its pillars focus on supercharging domestic AI development and adoption, aiming to yield economic benefits and prevent “woke” model use. This is the architecture it hopes the world will embrace.
More than previous technologies, AI systems create uniquely vulnerable dependencies. Algorithms are not transparent and can be manipulated to bias outputs — whether challenging antitrust rules or supporting protectionism. With a significant set of US tech chief executives pledging allegiance to this administration, the synergy between political and corporate agendas is clear. AI companies have even deployed team members in the US armed forces.
The weaponisation possibilities are extensive. Take the Cloud Act, which forces the disclosure of foreign data by domestic cloud providers, whose services dominate worldwide.
It is easy to see how tech can become an even greater bargaining chip in US foreign policy. As with steel or pharmaceuticals, Trump’s White House can simply impose a tariff on AI services or critical elements of the supply chain. The administration is already pushing the EU to weaken its Digital Services Act and considered leveraging tariffs to force a change to the UK’s online safety laws earlier this year.
What makes AI dependency particularly dangerous is its opacity. Unlike trade in physical goods, AI decision-making processes are often black boxes, making subtle manipulation nearly impossible to detect. These systems become deeply embedded in critical processes, with high replacement costs.
Many countries already have significant dependencies on US tech companies. Add AI and powerful lock-in effects would intensify. The rapid pace of its evolution makes it difficult for alternative suppliers to maintain competitive alternatives, adding chokepoint effects. With the integration of such technologies in infrastructure, defence and security systems, the stakes are high.
The Trump administration frames the AI race as a competition between democratic and authoritarian models. Yet this obscures a troubling reality: the gap between US and Chinese approaches to technological control is narrowing. Governance grows more authoritarian by the day in Trump’s America, with political interventions reaching individual company levels.
The window for convincing American partners to embrace “full stack” AI exports (where US companies sell access to platforms instead of products) is closing. Governments are learning from their trade war mistakes and investing in sovereign alternatives in the hope of avoiding critical dependencies. Ensuring transparency and security requirements and building in contractual protections against service termination might help in the short term, but coalitions with like-minded democracies to foster alternative AI ecosystems free from unilateral US policy change will be more sustainable.
The choice facing world leaders is not between US or Chinese AI dominance but between technological sovereignty and digital colonialism. Each trade confrontation should teach potential partners that today’s commercial relationships can become tomorrow’s coercive leverage.
Trade wars show how far the Trump administration is willing to go. The AI Action Plan offers the president the means to make that vision more vast and more permanent. The rest of the world should think twice before volunteering to take part.