AI Becomes an Instrument of the State

Three signals this week pointed in one direction: advanced compute is no longer purely a commercial market, it is becoming an instrument of statecraft. Washington is asserting privileged access to frontier models, Trump threatened 100% tariffs on French wine over a digital-services tax on U.S. tech, and the historical rhyme is hard to miss. The investment consequence is counter-intuitive: state involvement reads less like a ceiling on the AI build-out and more like an accelerant for it.