AI Reports · GovAI (Oxford) · 2026-10-17 · Research paper
Political Science and International Relations Safety Not Guaranteed: International Strategic Dynamics of Risky Technology Races November 2022 Journal Article Eoghan Stafford, Robert Trager and Allan D
Great powers are entering an era of intense competition to master security-relevant technologies such as AI, which can create shared risks like inadvertent crisis escalation and uncontrolled proliferation. Using a strategic model, the authors find that whether a laggard deploys risky technology depends on how adversarial competitors are and how close the laggard is to the leader's capability. They also find that when rivals are not deploying the riskiest technologies, safety measures can be weakened or reversed by risk compensation.