The AI Sovereignty Paradox at Home and Abroad

ShareBy experts and staffPublishedFebruary 27, 2026 12:24 p.m.ExpertsBy Michael FromanPresident, Council on Foreign RelationsShareThis is the tale of two cities—Washington and New Delhi—where the issues of sovereignty and artificial intelligence (AI) have recently come to a head.First, Washington. Under the second Trump administration, the United States has sought, through a laissez-faire regulatory approach, to ensure that privately owned U.S. firms build the most powerful AI systems in the world. In many respects, this approach is working as designed. Private capital and innovators are doing what they do best in building ever more ingenious U.S.-made mousetraps.The caveat to this light-touch regulatory environment was always that the government, to enhance its sovereign powers, would demand to become the ultimate power user of AI—co-opting the tools produced by U.S. firms for national security, at scale and on its own terms. In practice, this is proving rather complicated, not least because many in the AI community would like to build products, including those they provide to the military, with built-in safeguards.Is a sovereign power truly sovereign if a private firm can constrain the ability to use what could be a decisive military technology?The Pentagon says no. In an ultimatum issued earlier this week to Anthropic, the firm behind the AI assistant Claude, the Pentagon demanded guardrail-free access to the company’s AI models by no later than 5:01 p.m. today. As Chie...