Military Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Warfare in a Multipolar World

Over the past quarter century, the deployment of artificial intelligence in military affairs has undergone substantial qualitative change, producing what analysts have termed an "Oppenheimer Moment"[1]: a critical juncture in which previously stable paradigms are overturned by the non-linear advance of disruptive technologies, generating ethical dilemmas and security risks that resist easy solution. The transformations in the military use of AI under way since 2024 are an apt analogue to the Manhattan Project, which produced history's first atomic device. The contemporary observer thus bears witness to a transformation in the organizing principles of war and warfighting — principles that, barring catastrophe, will prevail throughout this century, one in which the collapse of unipolar U.S.…