On tech diplomacy and dilemmas of human-nonhuman interface

Much has been written about technology and AI altering how diplomats communicate and relate. Scholarly and practitioner concern in this context has often centred on how diplomacy's legacy institutions might adapt to, or be updated in the face of, technological change. This is the focus of a burgeoning field of international relations scholarship and practice surrounding so-called 'tech diplomacy'. This article argues for a different approach in and to this field: not for the making technological of diplomacy so much as the making diplomatic of conflicts arising from the growing ubiquity of AI and the rising power of a relatively small number of dominant tech players across the global landscape. It argues for the potential value of framing human-nonhuman relations in this context as diplomatic problems and approaching these in combination with other dilemmas of human-nonhuman interface in the Anthropocene, drawing upon recent work in the humanities that casts "diplomacy" in a heterodox register.