The Foreign Policy AI Evaluation Gap
TL;DR
It is argued that AI systems used in conducting foreign policy tasks - broadly enacting Tatecraft'- should be a priority test case for technical AI governance research, and an ECOSYSTEM review highlights the asymmetric focus on ASSESSMENT features over ACCESS, VERIFICATION, SECURITY, and OPERATIONALIZATION.
Abstract
We argue that AI systems used in conducting foreign policy tasks - broadly enacting'statecraft'- should be a priority test case for technical AI governance research. In enacting foreign policy, we refer to the formulation and implementation of external objectives by political actors. Statecraft is a high-consequence deployment domain, with extreme downside risks and structural properties that standard evaluation practices handle poorly. These features include partial observability, unbounded action spaces, contested ground truth, and multidimensional objectives. This paper advocates for a literature-grounded research agenda. Our contribution is threefold: (i) a claim about the structural conditions of foreign policy that combine catastrophic tail risk with technical evaluation complexities, (ii) an ECOSYSTEM review that highlights the asymmetric focus on ASSESSMENT features over ACCESS, VERIFICATION, SECURITY, and OPERATIONALIZATION, and (iii) a demand-side evaluation framework that decomposes foreign-policy workflows into bounded, evaluable sub-tasks with human recombination. As AI systems are already being deployed in the conduct of war and peace, amid limited public evaluation infrastructure from the technical AI governance community, this agenda is an urgent priority.