Foundational IR theory for emerging technology threats, existential risks, and global security institutions to protect the interests of future people.

I believe humanity is in a pivotal point in history due to emerging technologies. Developments such as AlphaFold and Far-UVC could usher in a post-disease era.

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (like large language models such as GPT-3, LaMDA) could usher in an era of unparalleled economic growth, and developments in space technology (e.g. SpaceX) are now exponential. We're on the cusp of being able to ensure a thriving humanity for potentially eons to come.

However, these technologies also present an era of unprecedented international security challenges.

Terrorists could capitalise on the ever-increasing ease of engineering dangerous pathogens to release a deadly pandemic; rogue states could drastically enhance their capabilities with AI-powered cyberwarfare, and low-cost robotic engineering could threaten the advantage in military capability of liberal states that has historically served as a deterrence.

Crucially, the theoretical foundations of traditional international relations often fail to make sense of these new challenges.

We've extensively modelled the key actors as states in an era where private tech companies drive the frontier of military capabilities and rogue terrorist groups may pose existential threats to entire nation-states.

We've extensively modelled how agents cooperate to reduce threats they expect to happen, yet we now face technology threats where we may need systems in place for when the totally unexpected happens as their outcomes could be globally catastrophic.

We've extensively modelled race dynamics for technologies such as nuclear weapons, but lessons here likely won't apply to artificial intelligence given how different the technology is.

Work in this area of focus has only emerged over the last couple of years, and it precisely here I hope to make my contribution - rethinking key theoretical foundations of IR in light of the new context we are in, and hopefully concluding with insights and proposals that will make the international community more robust to these emerging threats.