A few years ago, the idea would have sounded absurd. A software engineer in Lagos opens his laptop one morning and discovers that one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence systems is no longer available to him. Not because he lacks the money to pay for it. Not because the technology itself has failed. But because of where he lives and the passport he carries.
For most of the digital age, such a scenario belonged to the realm of fantasy. Technologies could be expensive. They could be unevenly distributed. Yet the underlying assumption remained remarkably stable: once a technology entered the market, it would eventually become available to everyone.
That assumption is beginning to crack. The immediate controversy centres on Anthropic, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, and growing efforts within the
United States government to restrict foreign access to certain frontier AI capabilities, on national-security grounds. The specifics of the regulatory dispute remain the subject of debate, but the significance of the episode extends far beyond any single company or technology.
For the first time since the birth of the internet era, a profound question is emerging at the centre of global politics: What if intelligence itself becomes subject to export controls?
