The emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI)—a system exceeding human performance across all strategically relevant cognitive domains—may grant its controlling entity a Decisive Strategic Advantage (DSA): the ability to dominate all rivals combined, consolidate global power, and establish a permanent “singleton” order. This paper provides a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis of the AI Superpower Hypothesis: the proposition that the first actor to achieve and deploy ASI—whether a nation-state, a corporation, or a hybrid entity—could translate that cognitive advantage into irreversible geopolitical, military, economic, and democratic domination on a global scale. We draw on: Formal Strategic Theory (Bostrom, 2014; Hendrycks et al., 2025) Geopolitical Analysis (RAND, 2025; WEF, 2025) Expert Warnings on Power Concentration (Yoshua Bengio, 2024a; Bartlett has significant limitations. Self-Reinforcing Power Concentration – pathways by which ASI control could become irreversible. Conclusion and Recommendations While ASI superpower risk is not the most likely near-term outcome, its tail probability and catastrophic consequences justify immediate, coordinated preventive action. We propose a governance framework combining: International Treaties – binding rules for AI development and deployment. Compute Monitoring – oversight of high-performance computational resources. Benefit-Sharing Mechanisms – equitable distribution of AI gains to reduce inequality. Distributed AI Development Architecture – decentralization to prevent monopolization of ASI capabilities. This framework aims to mitigate existential risks while maintaining global cooperation and strategic stability.
Zen Revista (2026) studied this question.