Governing an Ungovernable Space
For much of modern history, a state’s global influence was measured through military power, territorial reach, international alliances, and financial clout. Today, however, the influence of states extends through digital media that shape how societies absorb information, interpret political events, and manage crises. Algorithms embedded within social media platforms and search engines now influence public perception at a scale and speed that traditional media struggle to match.
In 2026, a viral video made with artificial intelligence showing smoke rising from a high-rise building in Bahrain was disseminated via social media in an attempt to convince domestic and international audiences that the war in the Middle East is spreading. A deep fake video, presumably showing how USS Abraham Lincoln was sinking after an Iranian missile strike was also widely disseminated in social media.
What those incidents show is how artificial intelligence is impacting modern warfare. Fabricated images and videos have long been used in counter-intelligence operations to mislead an adversary; however, AI has made it dramatically cheaper and faster to produce convincing material and distribute it to audiences unlikely to question its authenticity. The U.S. military has already announced its decision to integrate artificial intelligence in command operations, claiming it will improve the accuracy of command decisions. Last year, NATO acquired AI-enabled war-fighting systems that use cutting-edge artificial intelligence to support military operations and enhance battlefield awareness. As a result, deterrence is no longer defined by physical or material superiority, but also by how states counter AI-driven propaganda and integrate AI into their own military operations.
AI can also enable covert digital operations and automated cyberattacks, while AI-powered defenses are equally necessary to protect critical infrastructure. Some states have deployed AI for mass surveillance, pattern detection, and suppression of dissent and oppress ethnic minorities.
Presently, AI-generated digital content can shape public interpretations of unfolding events before institutions are able to verify facts or respond coherently. Recently, an AI-enhanced video showing an endless stream of Iranian trucks carrying ballistic missiles went viral on TikTok, amplifying the false narrative that China had sent military cargo to Iran and support the Islamic Republic in its war against the United States. Shaping perception through AI-enhanced misinformation has become a primary strategic battlespace.
For the GCC states, the security and strategic risks fuelled by foreign AI-driven misinformation campaigns are particularly high, as regional adversaries have integrated AI effectively into their misinformation campaigns. Regional stability now depends not only on military deterrence and diplomacy, but also on the ability of the states to control information environments and prevent hostile actors from disseminating false narratives that audiences readily accept as fact. And while it is true that misinformation was a security threat even before the advent of AI, AI has made it increasingly easy for hostile actors to create realistic images that directly support the exact narratives that they are trying to promote with a fraction of the costs and human effort previously required.
Addressing these threats requires the GCC to strengthen domestic AI capacity through sustained R&D investment, national AI architecture, domestic talent development, and public-private partnerships with leading research institutions.
AI is difficult to regulate, given the shortcomings of existing data governance arrangements, technical complexity and scale of data usage. However, it is imperative to determine the legitimacy, ethicality, and morality of technologies, and create multilateral arrangements to mitigate the socio-political consequences of technology or the costs of human interactions with technologies as a weapon of future wars (International cooperation within an institutional governance framework is essential for creating a blueprint to prevent the abuse of AI by authoritarian states, ensure accountability, as well as strategic measures to enforce compliance and ascribe appropriate punishment for non-conformity. Besides, multilateral arrangements on ethical AI development can serve as a deliberative framework to aggregate unilateral interests, foster dialogue and collaboration to optimize benefits, reconcile conflicting interests, prevent malicious use and mitigate the socio-economic risks and other security concerns associated with the technology.
The Asymmetry of Algorithmic Influence
Large-scale influence operations once required considerable resources. Today, generative AI has dramatically lowered those costs. Convincing images, text, audio, and video can be produced in minutes at negligible cost and distributed simultaneously across platforms, reaching millions before any official response is possible.
Traditional media once validated information before publication. Today, when most citizens get their news from social media, content travels globally before its accuracy can be assessed.
While AI-enhanced misinformation campaigns can be deployed rapidly and cheaply, defending against such attacks has been a costly endeavor. States had to mobilize independent fact-checking organizations and media sources to verify the veracity of the content, which has become increasingly difficult as AI content mixes actual information with fabricated facts. AI misinformation has become a new form of asymmetric warfare that allows actors with inferior military and economic abilities to destabilize an adversary through a low-cost online information campaign that could erode the citizens’ trust in the state and its institutions. In fact, AI misinformation campaigns do not aim to promote a single narrative that undermines the trust in the government, but rather to put forward competing narratives that harm the confidence in the institution and make citizens question the reliability of information provided by their government.
The global digital ecosystem compounds the problem. A handful of technology companies profit from engagement, including from shocking or false content, and users are incentivized to produce viral AI-produced content to find receptive audiences. Platform pledges to limit AI-generated content have not been matched by substantive moderation changes: X announced cuts to the staff overseeing content moderation on the platform, which shows their social media owners’ ambition to create a permissive environment for AI-generated content.
The Gulf as a Cognitive Frontier
The Gulf and the wider Middle East increasingly function as a live operational environment in which AI-misinformation tactics are tested and adapted in real time. Presently, social media is abundant with AI-generated material concerning the war in Iran, with AI-generated videos framing how citizens within and across the Gulf perceive armed conflict.
Meanwhile, content moderation for Arabic-language content remains uneven across major digital platforms, with many companies still struggling to adequately process the linguistic and contextual complexity of Arabic and its diverse dialects. Such shortcomings create opportunities for AI-enabled misinformation campaigns to evade detection and spread more effectively. Ironically, the Gulf’s high levels of digital connectivity and advanced communications infrastructure—often regarded as strategic strengths—also increase its exposure to these influence operations, making the region particularly vulnerable to AI-driven cognitive warfare.
Gulf governments have increasingly approached the development of artificial intelligence as a key strategic priority in their agenda for economic growth and sectoral diversification. UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are seeking to position themselves at the center of the global AI boom as they have invested in smart governance systems, AI infrastructure, and data centers to support AI-led economic growth. What the present war in Iran, however, shows is that technological innovation cannot be carried out without parallel investments in informational resilience and strategic digital autonomy.
Digital Sovereignty as Strategic Agency
The public policy challenge for Gulf States is not how to embrace AI but how to preserve agency in an era of AI-driven misinformation. The national AI strategies of the GCC states increasingly reflect their commitment to maintaining control over AI outputs and protecting citizens against AI-driven disinformation campaigns. Qatari AI guidelines require developers to avoid bias and discrimination, ensure that training data is representative of the Qatari population, disclose how AI systems operate, preserve human accountability, allow appeal or override of consequential decisions, and subject significant AI systems to external audit.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE have also developed AI ethical principles and guidelines, as well as AI regulation laws to support the responsible development of AI technologies in line with the government priorities. Nonetheless, challenges still remain. Anthropic has recently announced that its Claude platform is contributing to AI development, which could lead to recursive self-improvement, whereby an AI system assists in the creation of a more capable successor. The pace of this development appears to be faster than previously anticipated, raising significant implications that warrant closer attention from states seeking to preserve their digital sovereignty.
In Europe, the 2024 European Union AI Act offers one of the most ambitious attempts to protect digital sovereignty in the era of AI, while parallel efforts are increasingly focused on embedding transparent origin and verification mechanisms within digital content to identify whether the material has been enhanced with AI or not.
For Gulf States, the challenge that lies ahead is not how to prevent adversaries from expanding their network of AI-enhanced misinformation, but whether they can build resilient systems and processes that can promote transparency and trust in the digital era.. In this context, investment in sovereign digital infrastructure, computational capacity, and resilient technological ecosystems increasingly forms part of long-term strategic autonomy.
