Locating critical AI geopolitics

The title of this essay takes inspiration from a 1994 article, co-written by Dodds and Sidaway, entitled “Locating critical geopolitics” (Dodds & Sidaway, 1994). That article took stock of the developing field, emphasising geopolitics as a form of representational practice. Here, we build on that earlier piece by examining how geopolitical discourses frame the widely touted material-technological shifts initiated by AI. There is no lack of such rhetoric coming from the corporate sector, including firms involved in producing AI technologies. This is evident in the emergence of what we call ‘corporate geopolitics’—a genre distinct from the familiar categories of ‘formal’, ‘practical’ and ‘popular’ geopolitics.

© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).