The Geoeconomic and Geopolitical Implications of Artificial Intelligence An Analysis of the Transformation of National Sovereignty in the 21st Century

This thesis examines the geopolitical and geoeconomic implications of the contemporary artificial intelligence transition by situating it within a comparative historical framework that traces structural continuities between the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution and the computational order of the 2020s. The central thesis posits that the change to AI does not represent a radical rupture in the way global power is structured. Instead, it speeds up and enhances a set of repeated patterns where general-purpose technologies change the way sovereignty is distributed, the geography of strategic resources is changed, and the terms of great-power competition are transformed. Three chapters spanning three temporal registers follow the analysis. The first examines the means, through different historical epochs, through by which control over energy resources, infrastructure networks, and the tools of manufacturing became tools of imperial power projection, technology denial, and social transformation. It then — notes their echoes in the contemporary battles over semiconductors, rare earth supply chains, and hyperscale data center infrastructure. The second investigates, in the present day, the hypothetical financial dynamics of the AI investment cycle in clear comparison with the dot-com episode, the layered vulnerabilities of the AI supply chain from energy inputs to frontier model development, the geopolitical weaponization of export controls and vital mineral dependencies, the institutional architecture of algorithmic surveillance as shown by Palantir, and the structural position of the European Union as a normative power whose regulatory goals coexist with material dependence on both American platforms and Chinese mineral supply chains. The third chapter, which deals specifically with the alignment problem, the crisis of international AI governance, and the transforming potential of AI applications in healthcare, scientific research, and climate adaption, builds forward-looking possible future scenarios for the years 2027–2035 and evaluates the financial, geopolitical, and governance pathways the AI transition may follow — from managed repricing to disorganized correction to what the thesis terms the acceleration trap. The thesis maintains throughout that the fight for AI dominance and the fight for energy and mineral control are not separate battles but rather a single, repeatedly intertwined geopolitical process whose outcome—whether it generates generally distributed riches or destabilizing concentration of power—will be determined not by the technology itself but by the political decisions, institutional innovations, and acts of collective governance that the societies facing it demonstrate capable of producing. Keywords: artificial intelligence; geopolitics; geoeconomics; computational sovereignty; semiconductor supply chains; critical minerals; great-power competition; dual-use technology; General-purpose technologies (GPT); AI alignment; European strategic autonomy.