Effectiveness of Securitization in Converting Low-AGI Domains to High-AGI

Determine whether top-down interventions such as export controls, investment restrictions, and talent visa policies successfully convert commercial, public-facing low-AGI domains into securitized, state-grade high-AGI domains, or whether the multi-actor complexity and diffuse interests characteristic of commercial AI maintain relative autonomy despite political pressure; specifically assess the case of attempts to securitize European reliance on Chinese AI hardware.

Background

Within the discussion of asymmetric contagion between low- and high-AGI domains, the paper highlights that conflictual dynamics typically trickle down through deliberate political decisions rather than spontaneous spillover. It notes that export controls, investment restrictions, and talent visa policies represent top-down impositions of strategic logic onto commercial AI.

The authors explicitly raise the question of whether such interventions can reclassify and convert low-AGI fields into high-AGI domains. They emphasize that the prospects of such securitization remain uncertain, particularly in cases like U.S. efforts to frame European reliance on Chinese AI hardware as a security threat, given entrenched economic interdependencies. This uncertainty underscores a core unresolved issue in the paper’s ontology of AGI governance.

References

The critical question is whether such interventions successfully convert low-AGI fields into high-AGI domains, or whether the multi-actor complexity and diffuse interests of commercial AI maintain relative autonomy despite political pressure— as seen in the U.S. framing of European reliance on Chinese AI hardware as a security threat, an attempt to elevate commercial AI into high politics whose prospects remain uncertain given entrenched economic interdependencies.

— High vs. Low AGI: Ontology and Conceptual Taxonomy for Geopolitical Coherence (2510.12809 - Max, 6 Oct 2025) in Section 3 (The High/Low AGI Dichotomy: Dissecting the Archetypes), paragraph beginning “The inverse contagion— from high to low politics— also warrants attention.”