AI could help governments watch and control people. At the same time, three states are building a defense pact whose public terms leave basic questions about command and cost unanswered. Those are the power lines running through The Diplomat’s October 7 coverage of AI, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement and Taiwan’s military preparations.
Surveillance, Power and the Democratic Promise
Dr. Matthew Botvinick warned that AI can help authoritarian governments entrench their power by expanding surveillance and control over information citizens can access or share. Cheap, widespread sensors such as cameras, paired with online activity including social networks, generate data that AI can analyze, he said. Botvinick pointed to China as a warning of how a government can use that capability to monitor and control people.
The threat isn’t confined to governments that openly reject democracy. In the United States and other democracies, Botvinick said, the challenge is to meet law-enforcement and national-security needs with AI without creating tools that people can easily abuse. He cited a history of abuses in the United States, from FDR and J. Edgar Hoover to disclosures by Edward Snowden, and argued that officials should protect civil liberties and the rule of law before problems arise.
“Constitutional democracy was absolutely mandatory for AI safety,” Botvinick said. AI could over-empower the executive branch by automating obedience to central authority, he warned, while surveillance or propaganda could undermine citizens’ ability to act together. His proposed safeguards include reforms to emergency law, surveillance law, separation of powers and free-speech doctrines. He also described a possible democratic use for AI: informing citizens, supporting deliberation, and improving government transparency and accountability.
Botvinick described democracy as a balance between government power and society’s power. Dividing government authority among institutions can check the executive, he said; news media, civil society, a free marketplace of ideas, and free and fair elections support collective action. That’s a long list of institutional guardrails, not a report of mutual aid or community self-organization. Botvinick said strategic, proactive interventions are needed. Even a technically safe AI system, he warned, could help an authoritarian state oppress dissent and enforce political compliance.
Speaking in a purely personal capacity, not on behalf of Anthropic, Botvinick said companies that claim to care about AI safety, including all major AI labs, have a responsibility to protect and strengthen democracy. Corporate power, he also said, can be vulnerable to government power, particularly when authoritarian tendencies enter democratic leadership. His account of democratic backsliding in recent decades emphasized that governments subjugated corporate power more often than the reverse, putting government-industry relations squarely in view.
A Defense Pact Without Clear Orders
Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, 2026. It commits the countries to collective defense and expands defense cooperation, building on the Saudi-Pakistani Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement of September 2025. Yet officials haven’t made the full text public. A Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement says an armed attack against any of the three states would be regarded as an attack against them all; the terms announced publicly don’t say which forces would fight, who would command them or when they would act.
The agreement also leaves open how the governments would decide that military action was necessary, share costs, define common threats or reconcile competing ambitions and economic interests. Each of the three countries aspires to lead the Muslim world, but their claims and strategic interests differ. Turkiye invokes Ottoman heritage; Saudi Arabia’s claim rests on its custodianship of Mecca and Medina; Pakistan has sought to turn military strength into a leadership claim.
Their past decisions offer no clear picture of automatic solidarity. During Saudi Arabia’s 2017 blockade of Qatar, Turkiye sent troops and food supplies to Doha. In 2015, after Riyadh sought Pakistani forces and equipment for its intervention in Yemen, Pakistan’s parliament voted to remain neutral. The analysis says Pakistan and Turkiye hadn’t joined in defending Saudi Arabia against current attacks by Iran, as the Houthis threatened a “high price” for intervention.
Money and equipment bring another hierarchy. SIPRI’s 2026 data showed China supplied 80 percent of Pakistan’s major arms imports in 2021–2025, while the United States supplied 77 percent of Saudi Arabia’s. Turkiye brings decades of NATO experience and a substantial domestic defense industry; Saudi Arabia relies heavily on foreign suppliers, and Pakistan increasingly depends on Chinese equipment. Integrating forces would require intelligence-sharing and coordination across different systems, while suppliers could limit cooperation. Saudi Arabia has substantial oil wealth, Turkiye has industrial capacity but struggles with inflation, and Pakistan is an IMF borrower. The accord announced a secretariat and industrial cooperation, but it didn’t create an equivalent to NATO’s financial arrangement. The analysis asks whether Riyadh would demand influence if it supplied most funding, and whether its partners would accept that influence while supplying forces and bearing casualties.
Taiwan’s Defense Moves North
Taiwan has moved away from plans to defeat an enemy on the opposite shore or seek a decisive littoral battle, turning instead toward an erosion strategy and sustained operations. More than one-third of Taiwan’s population lives in the north, where political leaders, important operational command organizations and transportation hubs are located. More than about half of the Republic of China (ROC) Army and Marine Corps’ active-duty brigade-level forces normally serve north of Miaoli and Yilan; exercises can bring nearly two-thirds of active-duty ground forces there.
Taiwan’s 2026 schedule included a five-day Immediate Combat Readiness Exercise in June, a five-day Joint Defense Exercise in July, a 10-day Han Kuang Exercise in August and a 10-day Lu Sheng Exercise expected in October. In September 2026, Maj. Gen. Lin Shih-wei said Lu Sheng focused on successive resistance and sustained operations. Moving the exercise to northern Taiwan, he said, would familiarize troops with terrain, deployments and the use of troops and firepower. The expanded exercises also train coordination with civilian sectors in using manpower and material resources.
The ROC Navy has taken on more defense roles, and the Marine Corps has shifted from offensive amphibious operations and power projection toward urban defense. In late September, Taiwan’s Coast Guard appointed a Navy vice admiral as deputy director-general, with the stated purpose of bringing naval tactical thinking into the Coast Guard and supporting its transition from peacetime to wartime. The authors identify joint operations and command and control as major challenges: training capacity is limited, geographic constraints restrict exercises, and nearby residents must not be disturbed. Media reports in January 2026 said U.S. personnel had been stationed at Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense Joint Firepower Coordination Center. The account describes a defense apparatus adapting to a possible invasion, while the reported grassroots responses and mutual-aid efforts are absent from these pieces.