In my last post, I argued that we need more local AI safety hubs because no one will help your country except the people who live there.
Talent and funding alone won’t cut it. These resources need to be directed towards a goal. That goal is downstream of your country’s strategy, and many countries don’t have one yet.
This post is my summary of research on what middle powers — countries that are not building frontier AI — can do. Once you have a sense of what your country should do, you can work backwards to what your hub should focus on.
The goal
The most advanced AI systems are being developed by a handful of companies, housed in the US and China. This raises a question for everyone else: what happens to us as these systems become more powerful?
Gradual disempowerment
Today’s economy, culture and governments serve the people because they depend on their labour, votes, taxes, attention. As AI replaces human participation in each, those dependencies disappear, and so do the incentives to serve them. There’s no villain, just a slow slide into a world where people are no longer needed and no longer get a say. (see more)
Catastrophic pandemics
AI lowers the barriers to building and deploying bioweapons. The pool of actors with the capability and intent to cause mass casualties is small today, but will grow as the expertise and resources required decrease. States, rogue actors or a misaligned system acting on its own could engineer pathogens deadlier than any natural pandemic. (see more)
Critical infrastructure collapse
As AI gets better at long, complex tasks, it will get better at running cyberattacks, whether orchestrated by humans or an AI system acting on its own. We’ve already had a preview when OpenAI’s models escaped their test environment and broke into Hugging Face’s servers to cheat on an evaluation. Attacks that once took a team of experts and months of prep can now be mounted in minutes, leaving our water, energy and food systems vulnerable. (see more)
Concentration of power
If the most powerful AI systems confer an outsized economic and military advantage, whoever controls them will be able to accumulate power and hold onto it unchecked. They may do this through AI-enabled technologies for mass surveillance, disinformation and autonomous weapons. (see more)
One version of the goal is preventing these outcomes. But a future where you merely avoid catastrophe is not a future you’re willing to fight for.
The ship we’re sailing should not merely avoid the rocks but head somewhere we’re excited to arrive. A future where the economy grows with AI rather than being hollowed out by it, where governments work better because of AI rather than despite it, where there is abundance to be had for all.
Strategies for middle powers
So, what can middle powers do in the face of this? Here’s my summary of the five strategies that came up across the resources I read:
Build resilience
Assume the risks above cannot be prevented. Be ready for them.
This means hardening critical infrastructure against cyberattacks, building the capacity to detect and contain engineered pandemics, preparing your election cycles for AI-enabled disinformation and preventing mass unemployment.
Adapt and thrive
Rather than racing to build frontier AI, race to adopt it so you capture the gains from deployment.
Anton Leicht and Dean Ball call this “the race worth winning”. This means pushing AI adoption, rebuilding public services and the economy around what AI systems can do and reskilling people for the work that remains.
This requires securing reliable access to frontier models. If your country is going to rest on these systems, it can’t be subject to the whims of another government. For example, the US government ordered Anthropic to block foreign access to its most capable models in June 2026, leading it to temporarily shut off worldwide access to Mythos 5 and Fable 5.
Shape governance
You don’t have to build frontier AI to have a say in how it gets built.
Countries without frontier models have already shaped how AI is governed. The UK AI Security Institute became the leading evaluator for frontier models and has been copied by the US, Japan, Singapore and others. The summit series got AI companies to commit to testing their models for dangerous capabilities and publishing safety frameworks.
Countries can convene summits, negotiate access conditions as a bloc, publish safety research and share evaluation tools to shape how frontier AI systems get developed and deployed.
Build together
No middle power can build a frontier model alone. Together, they might.
The US and China don’t have to be the options we get locked into. But the alternative has to be a genuine frontier model, not just one that trails behind the frontier by a few months.
Anton Leicht sketches out that it would take a coalition of liberal democracies investing $500 billion over 4 years and operating with an unprecedented level of coordination to build another frontier model. He calls this the middle power project.
With this, middle powers would have unfettered access to their own frontier models, dictate how the models get developed and deployed, and run their own safety research.
Prevent together
All four strategies assume that building superintelligence is inevitable. It doesn’t have to be.
If you believe that the worst outcomes can’t be defended against or recovered from, the alternative is to ensure we don’t build superintelligence at all or to enable a pause long enough to figure out how to build it safely.
This requires countries to pool their leverage. For example, by making market access conditional on safety requirements, coordinating export controls on the AI supply chain or committing to responding together when red lines are crossed, so no single country bears the retaliation alone.
These strategies are not mutually exclusive. You could build resilience while pushing for a pause. You could shape governance while betting on a frontier model of your own.
The strategy you choose depends on which risks concern you most, how you believe this will play out, the leverage your country has and what you’re willing to do to succeed.
Once you have a goal…
… you can work backwards to what your hub should do.
If you choose to work on resilience, your hub might help build the research capacity your government lacks by running programs, or supply talent to relevant projects. If you choose to work on shaping governance, your hub might help build relationships with other countries or engage with politicians. If you choose to prevent superintelligence, your hub might help build coalitions with organisations or drum up political will.
You don’t need a perfect strategy to get started because no matter the future, your country will need to be prepared. Middle powers are where adverse effects are likely to manifest the earliest and most dramatically given their lower defensive capabilities.
Talk to other hubs and keep workshopping your goal. Though your country comes first, it does not exist in a vacuum. Pandemics do not respect borders. Cyberattacks target the weakest links. Disinformation travels over the internet. The economy is globalised.
Helping your country thrive requires thriving alongside the rest of the world.
Resources
These are far from exhaustive! Let me know in the comments if you have recommendations of other middle power strategies.
The Moonshot by Anton Leicht
A coalition of democracies could build a frontier model beyond US control for $500 billion.
The Race Worth Winning by Anton Leicht & Dean Ball
Middle powers can’t win the race to build frontier AI, so win the one that matters: adapting it into your government and economy.
How AI Safety Is Getting Middle Powers Wrong by Anton Leicht
The AI safety movement should stop pushing middle powers towards global governance and start helping them build their national AI strategies.
(Podcast) Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world from 80,000 Hours
Leicht in conversation on the ideas above.
What can middle powers do for frontier AI governance? by Markus Anderljung & Stephen Clare
Middle powers have already shaped frontier AI governance, through safety institutes, summits and market access, and hold far more leverage than they think.
A Blueprint for Multinational Advanced AI Development by Oxford Martin School
How “bridge powers” could pool compute, talent and data to build advanced AI together. CERN, but for AI.
How middle powers may prevent the development of artificial superintelligence by Alex Amadori, Gabriel Alfour, Andrea Miotti & Eva Behrens
A coalition of middle powers holding 20% of global GDP could deter superintelligence development everywhere through trade restrictions and escalating penalties.
What countries outside the AI production chain should do by Ege Erdil
Political stability, capital formation and getting out of automation’s way are what keep a country relevant.
Can middle powers really never build frontier AI? by Elsie Jang
Don’t accept “middle powers can’t build frontier AI” on faith. The claim deserves empirical scrutiny before countries plan around it.
Pax Silica for Middle Powers by James Chai
Middle powers should pool their supply-chain chokepoints into a third alliance, building good-enough AI instead of picking a superpower.
Great points and compilation of resources, Li-Lian! Thank you! I particularly liked that you mentioned adaptation and resilience. Coming from climate policy, these points jump out to me, but they're not brought about often I AI safety. And we definitely need to strengthen fieldbuilding and public awareness in middle powers - that's exactly why me and another bluedot alum are founding Plures.org, an organization focused on attracting talent and raising public awareness to ai governance specifically in middle powers!