STATE EXCLUSION
AND THE INFERENCE ERA

The dominant AI policy frame was founded in the training era and centers on building frontier models, excluding almost every state outside the US and China. The emerging geoeconomics of export controls, chip restrictions, and compute thresholds all follow from this duality.

This has resulted in governance frameworks built around the interests of the states already at the center, increasing systemic fragility through power concentration. States bearing the highest costs and facing the greatest barriers to entry in today’s AI infrastructure architecture are systematically excluded from its design.

Today, we are moving into inference era governance which asks, who controls deployment infrastructure?


MIDDLE POWER VULNERABILITY
AND LEVERAGE

Middle powers are often described only in terms of dependencies. We argue they are simultaneously sites of vulnerability and leverage.

Compute power is characterized by compounding chokepoints. API dependency, model licensing, cloud infrastructure, semiconductor production, energy systems, and critical mineral supply chains increasingly determine who can build, deploy, and govern AI.

For many actors, the practical choice is not between dependency and sovereignty, but between competing infrastructure ecosystems. As US and Chinese providers expand globally, many states face decisions about which dependencies they will inherit rather than whether dependency can be avoided altogether.

Yet the same architecture that concentrates power also creates material leverage. Training-era frameworks largely overlooked the strategic importance of energy resources, critical minerals, cable routing geography, landing stations, investment review mechanisms, industrial capacity, and other territorial assets. In the inference era, these become increasingly consequential governance objects.

Understanding both vulnerability and leverage is essential for meaningful AI sovereignty. We develop analytical frameworks that help middle powers, emerging economies, and exposed states identify strategic options, strengthen governance capacity, and exercise greater agency within an increasingly concentrated global compute economy.