New Infrastructure Loading-4: NATO, AI, and War

When discussing the economic and technical infrastructure of artificial intelligence (AI), one must eventually move beyond the technology sector. This is because computing capacity, along with corporate production processes, is increasingly becoming a strategic element that determines the defense capabilities of states.

In its 2024 updated AI strategy, NATO clearly stated its goal to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in the fields of defense and security, increase interoperability between AI systems, and expand cooperation with the private sector and academia. The strategy also drew attention to the impact of AI's intensive computing requirements on energy consumption and the transfer of dual-use technologies developed in the civilian market to the military sphere. The important detail here is that data, computing, communication infrastructure, and AI are becoming interconnected elements of military capacity.

In its 2025 Data Strategy, NATO also announced that its goal is to transform the alliance into a more "data-centric" organization. The aim is for data from different fields to be used more quickly and collectively in joint operations. The Alliance Data Sharing Ecosystem, launched in 2024, aims to share and process data in areas such as critical undersea infrastructure, and the geographical and maritime information environment. In this direction, while communication in traditional warfare meant delivering orders and information to the front line, in digitized warfare, communication networks are transforming into a decision-making infrastructure where data from sensors, satellites, drones, and various intelligence systems are brought together. In this context, NATO's Digital Backbone approach includes a common digital infrastructure, cloud computing, federated networks, and the rapid processing of data from different sources. The 2026 Alliance Digital Strategy aims for AI to provide situational awareness and real-time decision support, especially at the tactical level, and to integrate data flows extending from sensors to "effects."

Therefore, communication infrastructure is becoming a part of military power in terms of who collects, carries, processes, and transforms data into decision systems. In this way, the boundary between communication technology and weapons technology is increasingly blurring. For this reason, thinking about the war of the future solely through "smart weapons" may be incomplete.

Here, from a critical political-economy perspective, it should be seen that the production chain of war technology is increasingly merging with technology capital. NATO's AI strategy clearly acknowledges that the private sector, large technology companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and venture capital are important actors in this ecosystem. NATO's 2026 Innovation Scale-Up Package clearly aimed to mobilize private capital for the scaling of defense technologies, calling on financial institutions to increase private capital investments in the fields of defense and security. As a result, the boundaries between weapons technology and civilian technology are being eroded; investment funds, technology companies, startups, universities, and states are meeting at different points of the same innovation chain but within the same ecosystem. Therefore, while states increase their war capacity, the question of which private global and national companies, which technology platforms, and which capital groups are strengthening their strategic position in the future arms industry requires a discussion of the economic and political consequences of the policies announced by NATO. Because technology requires a constantly updated computing infrastructure, chips, data, and cloud systems. At the same time, it requires energy, fiber networks, software, and human labor. Therefore, it requires capital to ensure the continuity of all these.

The 2026 Ankara Summit, which contained very important developments and decisions, also formed an important threshold in this respect. While allies are moving towards the goal of increasing arms industry spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, initiatives such as the NATO Innovation Scale-Up Package and Drone Edge were also accepted at the same summit. It was also announced that over 40 billion dollars would be invested in counter-drone capacity over the next five years. The increase in defense spending also means an expanding market for chip manufacturers, software companies, data infrastructure providers, communication companies, and next-generation weapons companies. Here, in the new form of the relationship that capitalism has established with technology, it should be considered that the war of the future will also shape the technology market of the future.

From Turkey's perspective, this transformation is also important. The holding of the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara and the gathering of NATO, allied countries, and industry representatives at the summit's arms industry forum made Turkey's position in this new defense-technology ecosystem more visible. However, the capacity that Turkey has developed in the arms industry, unmanned systems, communication technologies, and electronic systems has limited advantages within this transformation. This is because Turkey is a country that uses and produces AI-supported defense systems, but it does not possess the same strategic capacity in the chip, computing, data, and communication infrastructures upon which these systems rely.

The data-communication-computing-energy-AI chain that we have been following since the beginning of the series will affect the whole world with the plans made and strategies developed on it as the dominant components of the new digital economy. In a structure where civilian technology companies and financial capital are increasingly included in the production chains of arms industry systems, AI creates a new layer that connects these two areas. Because in the war of the future, superiority will not be determined only by who has the more advanced weapon. Who collects the data, who calculates it, who produces the chip, who controls the energy, and which capital groups finance all of this will also determine the outcome of the war. As seen in NATO decisions and strategies, a new war is loading, just like a new infrastructure. The institutions and organizations that prepare the world for war no longer feel the need to hide this. The questions of who owns the infrastructure that makes it possible for AI to become a weapon are therefore important for humanity and its future. We will see in the coming times how smart AI will be, whose interests this intelligence will turn into a weapon for, and how humanity will pay the price for this.