The Autumn/Winter 2026 Virtual Routes Colloquium Series explores the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in global politics, security, and governance. From open-source software communities and autonomous cyber operations to frontier AI labs and China’s pursuit of frontier AI capabilities, the series examines how AI is reshaping technological competition, geopolitical power, and the possibilities for effective governance.
The geopoliticisation of open-source software communities: Towards a model of features, organization, and methods
Jack Goldsmith, AI Corporate Governance Specialist at the Human Technology Institute (HTI), the University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
21 October 2026, 10:00-11:00 CEST
Open-source software (OSS) underpins more than 90% of modern technology and is critical to both AI and cyber security supply chains. Yet OSS communities remain underexamined as geopolitical actors despite their growing influence on technology governance, security, and innovation. Understanding their motivations, organization, and methods is increasingly important.
This paper argues that OSS communities are distinct from both state-like technology firms and non-state cyber actors. Their decentralised, transnational, and often pseudonymous nature gives them a dual identity. On one side are visible institutions such as foundations and online platforms that engage with governments and regulators. On the other is a diffuse network of individual contributors, universities, companies, and governments that collectively develop and maintain OSS.
Although geographically dispersed and largely peer-based, OSS communities can exert significant political influence. Through a case study of OSS resistance to the EU Cyber Resilience Act, the paper demonstrates how these networks can organize and shape regulatory outcomes. It concludes that OSS communities do not fit traditional models of digital actors and therefore require new approaches to governance and engagement. In doing so, the paper contributes one of the first international relations analyses of OSS communities and their role in contemporary geopolitics.
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China and the geopolitics of data
Linda van der Horst, Diplomat, The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs; PhD Candidate at Leiden University
25 November 2026, 16:00-17:00 CET
Access to high-quality structured data is a critical aspect of the AI ‘triad’ (algorithms, data and compute) that determine the power and effectiveness of a machine learning system. China, while actively pursuing frontier AI capabilities, is also advancing AI diffusion as its competitive edge both to advance those capabilities and to use AI to strengthen its industrial sectors. It aims to create a constant feedback loop (‘data flywheel’) in which the widespread adoption of (low-cost) AI across all sectors generates real-world data can in turn be used to advance AI models themselves. For this purpose, China has embarked on an unparalleled whole-of-government approach to build a nationwide data architecture and it is pursuing a data industrial policy. China’s policy developments have not gone unnoticed in Washington DC, and experts are already calling for a US response. This article seeks to interrogate the geopolitical implications of China’s data industrial policy. First of all, the article investigates the impact on US-China relations through the lens of techno-economic statecraft. Secondly, the article intends to understand the implications for the agency of third countries, developed and developing countries.
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Overlooked front: AI ethics and autonomous cyber operations
Ann-Katrien Oimann is Assistant Professor, Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), Tilburg University
16 December 2026, 16:00-17:00 CET
The increasing sophistication of cyber threats—from routine data breaches to complex, long-term operations like Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)—has led to a growing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity. AI is now deployed both defensively, to enhance threat detection and response, and offensively, to increase the scale and precision of cyberattacks. While the ethical implications of AI in physical autonomous systems have received significant attention in recent years, the use of AI in cyberoperations remains largely underexplored from an ethical perspective. As autonomous capabilities in cyberspace expand with an ambiguous regulatory environment, ethical scrutiny becomes increasingly urgent. This article seeks to fill this gap by offering an initial normative evaluation of AI-enabled autonomous systems in cyberspace. First, we outline the bidirectional relationship between AI and cybersecurity and provide an overview of key features of cyber operations in the context of warfare. Second, we identify three ethical risks that arise in this domain. Third, we assess the implications of these risks for responsible deployment. In doing so, the article contributes to the broader AI ethics discourse by highlighting a domain that is both socially consequential and that remains largely overlooked in current ethical analyses and regulatory debates.
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Governance and rivalry: Frontier AI lab coordination on transparency and security
Isabella Wilkinson, Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Society Programme at Chatham House, and DPhil Public Policy candidate at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
20 January 2027, 16:00-17:00 CET
Prospects for global AI governance are undercut by intense competition: between superpowers and among their leading labs. But it is hardly a ‘Wild West’, devoid of rules, norms and standards. Before and beyond state regulation, rival labs often coordinate on ‘private’ governance. This activity has major implications for security, markets and state regulation, but is intensely understudied. Drawing from a foundation of literature on global governance, international political economy and organizations, this paper considers why, zooming into two measures increasingly central to AI security, reporting and documentation: why do competing frontier AI companies develop and adopt shared transparency practices?
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