The Impact of AI on Strategic Stability is What States Make of It: Comparing US and Russian Discourses

Military applications of artificial intelligence (AI) are said to impact strategic stability, broadly defined as the absence of incentives for armed conflict between nuclear powers. While previous research explores the potential implications of AI for nuclear deterrence based on technical characteristics, little attention has been dedicated to understanding how policymakers of nuclear powers conceive of AI technologies and their impacts. This paper argues that the relationship between AI and strategic stability is not only given through the technical nature of AI, but also constructed by policymakers’ beliefs about these technologies and other states’ intentions to use them. Adopting a constructivist perspective, we investigate how decision-makers from the United States and Russia talk about military AI by analyzing US and Russian official discourses from 2014–2023 and 2017-2023, respectively. We conclude that both sides have constructed a threat out of their perceived competitors’ AI capabilities, reflecting their broader perspectives of strategic stability, as well as the social context characterized by distrust and feelings of competition. Their discourses fuel a cycle of misperceptions which could be addressed via confidence building measures. However, this competitive cycle is unlikely to improve due to ongoing tensions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.