This series, developed by our team at OCPL, examines how nine aspiring AI powers—Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, and the UK—are shaping the global AI landscape independent amidst US-China dominance in the field. Rather than viewing AI geopolitics as a binary race, the series analyzes each state's AI strategy, contributions to global AI development and governance, interests and resource needs, and alignment with US and Chinese ecosystems. It examines the concept of AI sovereignty as states attempt to build their own leverage within AI development chains and avoid technological dependencies. The country profiles reveal how aspiring powers are establishing distinct spheres of influence, developing foundational models, promoting their own standards, and creating a more complex geopolitical landscape than a simple US-China competition suggests.

Popular narratives frame AI development as a bilateral technological race between the US and China, but true global AI leadership requires excellence beyond the core tech stack. Beyond pure technological innovation, domestic implementation, regulation, and moral legitimacy matter. The analysis examines how each power pursues different strategies, with significant implications for democratic societies and the geopolitical landscape.

While the US pursues frontier AI dominance through export controls and proprietary models, China is gaining ground through open source releases optimized for global adoption and localized use. The piece argues that lasting AI leadership depends not on technological superiority alone, but on three interconnected attributes: quality (technical reliability and assurance mechanisms), reach (global accessibility and infrastructure), and adaptability (functioning across diverse linguistic, cultural, and business contexts). 

Across published parliamentary evidence, academic research (forthcoming), and media commentary, this body of work articulates the UK's distinct and often-overlooked leadership role in global AI governance. As my colleague Sam Hogg and I wrote in a letter to the editor at The Economist, rather than competing on computational brute force, Britain's advantage lies in shaping the global agenda to advance quality, safety, and security amidst international race dynamics that deprioritize these factors. The UK can export expertise in AI auditing, evaluation, and responsible deployment while positioning itself as an essential mediator between competing AI superpowers. By defining success on its own terms—as a trusted benchmark for responsible AI innovation—the UK can leverage its distinctive position to serve both British interests and those of the world at large.

A practical resource for governments, diplomats, and policymakers navigating AI governance in an era of rapid technological change and fragmented regulatory landscapes. The piece articulates the mindset, skillsets, and practices required for diplomatic engagement across technical, policy, and cultural domains simultaneously. It outlines the "360° diplomat" toolkit: maintaining curiosity and genuine empathy while building awareness of one's own positionality; developing technical, policy, and cultural fluency to translate between engineers and policymakers; and practicing bridge-building through interrogating zero-sum framings, identifying shared stakes, and creating hybrid forums that bring diverse actors together. This analysis will be expanded into a comprehensive resource on the OCPL website.

In reviewing OCPL's work in 2025, I reflect on the interconnected systemic challenges we all face for the coming decade: rapid AI advancement fueling US-China tech competition while prioritizing development over safety; deepening global dependencies amid fragmented attempts at digital sovereignty; concentrated power in a handful of tech giants; and information ecosystems that undermine shared reality. These challenges are what OCPL was designed to address in its work across three core areas: producing policy-relevant research; building bridges across cultural and epistemic divides ; and training the next generation of experts through the fellowship program.