Artificial intelligence alters the balance of power abroad and tests the moral and institutional stability of the United States at home, former USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick argued.
On October 16, the Baylor Chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society hosted a lecture titled “AI and Diplomacy” in Kayser Auditorium. Before she took the stage, Glick outlined her argument in an interview with The Standard: AI is not a peripheral innovation but a powerful instrument that will reorder geopolitics and expose America’s moral perimeter.
Glick’s central claim is that U.S. adversaries already exploit AI’s capabilities. “Do not be so naive to think that our adversaries do not use AI for nefarious ends,” Glick said. The point was not speculative. For years, authoritarian states have been deploying technology first and rationalizing it later.
“Do not be so naive to think that our adversaries do not use AI for nefarious ends.”
The most explicit case she highlighted was China. In her view, Beijing races not only for a commercial or technological advantage but also for a potent instrument of social control. Surveillance against persecuted minorities is not a distant dystopian future but is rather being actualized in the current day, especially against groups like Uyghur Muslims. Glick argued that China’s AI strategy collapses the distance between software and state power, a relationship once seen as mutually beneficial.
Her warning extended beyond foreign adversaries to the American policy dilemma itself. “We are at a moment in history where people are taking a deep breath to analyze what is available to us,” she said. The U.S. must decide whether it will “stay ahead of China or take a responsible road with technology to put regulation on it.” Delay favors regimes that do not restrain themselves.
Glick expects the current administration to press for rapid deployment out of Silicon Valley without any sense of restraint on technological innovation. If a figure like JD Vance were to become president in 2028, she suggested, the direction of AI policy would continue in that vein.
The choice between acceleration and discipline is not partisan in the conventional sense but rather civilizational in scope. The costs of acceleration are not abstract, Glick argued. “There are rules in our society that will become undervalued, and that takes away from the special thing that is America.”
If AI displaces or dispossesses workers across the spectrum from “blue-collar to academics,” the social fabric that underpins our societal order weakens. Economic dislocation erodes shared purpose, strains public trust, and leaves citizens more vulnerable to populist or anti-institutional movements. Any serious adoption of AI requires a commitment to upskilling “to enhance the workforce for the 21st century.”
Glick sees the prevailing public mood as careless rather than malicious. “I think people are willfully blind in regard to AI,” she said. The desire to “move fast, to make money, to advance” is not new, but the domain is new. Diplomacy, in her view, is not immune to the costs of speed. Glick drew a hard boundary: “Diplomacy is the room for diplomats. And AI should be used as a tool for things such as translations… The human skills of brokering peace, the human skills of public diplomacy, of sharing American culture — that cannot be done through ChatGPT.”
“The human skills of brokering peace, the human skills of public diplomacy, of sharing American culture — that cannot be done through ChatGPT.”
AI may assist, but it cannot substitute for the human work that stabilizes political order. The lecture that followed in Kayser Auditorium reflected the same logic that AI is not a neutral technical instrument. It is a venue in which rival models of governance are already in contest. Authoritarian states such as China deploy AI without hesitation, while the United States is caught in indecision. If that hesitation persists, the terms of diplomacy will not be set by diplomats at all. They will instead be set by the systems that outpace them.