As artificial intelligence reshapes economies, institutions, and geopolitics at unprecedented speed, the real test is no longer technological capacity but global legitimacy. This article reflects on the lessons of 2025 and sets a clear pathway for 2026.
By H.E. Deemah AlYahya, Secretary-General of the Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO)
As we start 2026, it is tempting to describe artificial intelligence as a story of breakthroughs breeding new models, new capabilities, new promises. Yet history rarely remembers moments for their novelty alone. It remembers what they revealed.
And 2025 revealed something we can no longer afford to ignore: technology is now moving faster than international legitimacy.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a laboratory curiosity or a narrow corporate advantage. It is becoming infrastructure. It shapes how we learn and work, how we vote and receive healthcare, how we respond to disasters, and how we understand truth itself. But while AI has scaled at extraordinary speed, our systems of cooperation have lagged behind. Governance remains fragmented. Safeguards are uneven. And participation is too often limited to a few.
When that happens, innovation accelerates fragility instead of automatically producing inclusive progress.
That is why this moment matters. If 2025 was the year AI accelerated, 2026 must be the year we build International Digital Legitimacy; the year we found the diplomatic architecture that allows tech diplomacy to ensure technologies like AI become a force for peace and prosperity, rather than fragmentation and instability.
The Cost of Digital Fragility
We have already seen what a deficit of digital legitimacy looks like.
Damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea exposed how physical digital arteries have become strategic vulnerabilities. In Gaza, communication blackouts disrupted
humanitarian coordination and medical relief. Global cloud outages temporarily froze healthcare and emergency services across multiple countries, reminding us how dependent institutional continuity has become on shared digital systems.
Now layer artificial intelligence onto this reality and the risks multiply.
AI-generated disinformation is not simply a content problem; it is an accelerant for political division and institutional distrust. Nearly six in ten people worldwide now worry that they cannot distinguish what is real from what is fake online. That erosion of trust does not remain online; it spills into elections, markets, and social cohesion.
This is not a media problem. It is a legitimacy problem. Because when citizens cannot trust the information that shapes their choices, institutions lose consent, markets miscalculate risk, and political processes weaken. Trust is not a byproduct of technology; it is the foundation of legitimacy, and once it erodes, instability follows far beyond the screen.
At the same time, the benefits of AI are concentrating at unprecedented speed. USD 109.1 billion in private AI investment is concentrated in just two economies; the rest of the world, with barely USD 30–40 billion combined, remains largely outside the room where AI’s future is decided. This concentration matters. When most countries lack the capacity to meaningfully shape AI systems, we risk creating a global economy where opportunity is determined by limited geography rather than merit, need, or potential.
This year at the United Nations, the reality was stated plainly: 118 countries remain absent from AI governance initiatives. Frameworks that exclude the majority of humanity will lack legitimacy, and ultimately durability.
The question before us is therefore clear. Will AI unite or divide? Strengthen institutions or hollow them out? Create shared prosperity or deepen inequality? The answer depends on whether we have the will to build International Digital Legitimacy.
What International Digital Legitimacy Really Means
International Digital Legitimacy is not a slogan. It is the foundation that allows tech diplomacy to function in a world shaped by code.
Just as global health relies on the International Health Regulations, and aviation depends on coordinated safety protocols, the digital era requires its own framework—one that upholds the stability of essential digital systems, protects civilian digital infrastructure, establishes norms against digital aggression, and enables coordinated cross-border response when digital crises occur.
This is, in effect, the Digital Geneva Convention our era requires.
International Digital Legitimacy creates conditions for peace and prosperity by protecting critical systems—healthcare, digital identity, humanitarian data, payment rails, and aviation infrastructure. It safeguards institutional continuity during crises through pre-agreed channels for mutual assistance that respect sovereignty while enabling timely support. It establishes predictability and restraint, reducing the risk that digital incidents escalate into geopolitical confrontation. And it enables coordinated response, with crisis protocols defined before emergencies strike.
Well-designed coordination mechanisms do not erase sovereignty or cultural diversity. They create corridors for cooperation—allowing differences to be managed rather than weaponized. This is where tech diplomacy translates the promise of AI into lived reality, ensuring innovation serves humanity rather than destabilizes it.
Why Tech Diplomacy Needs This Foundation
Artificial intelligence cannot be governed by governments alone. It moves through platforms, cloud systems, and data flows that rival state power. In my work, I often ask a simple question: who negotiates with actors that are not countries, but wield the power of countries?
The answer is tech diplomacy; the practice of governing technology itself by negotiating norms, rules, and responsibilities with states, companies, and communities so that public values are translated into digital realities.
But tech diplomacy cannot operate in a vacuum. It requires International Digital Legitimacy as its foundation: a shared understanding of what must be protected, what conduct is unacceptable, and how coordination happens during crises.
When asked how enforceable agreements can exist in a world of jurisdiction-shopping platforms or conflicting public values, the answer is not coercion. It is legitimacy. When protected domains are clearly defined, crisis protocols are established, and private actors are recognized as systemic stakeholders with responsibilities, enforcement becomes a shared interest in stability rather than a zero-sum contest of power.
We are already seeing this logic take shape. At the Doha Forum, a high-level roundtable on International Digital Legitimacy brought together ministers, ambassadors, and technology leaders to define protected digital domains, design crisis protocols, and establish diplomatic channels where states and companies negotiate the rules governing our digital future.
In the AI era, diplomacy must be able to sit across from both ministers and CEOs, understanding that each shapes whether technology becomes a force for peace or instability.
What Building International Digital Legitimacy Requires
Building International Digital Legitimacy means establishing the diplomatic architecture that allows nations to coordinate rather than fragment.
States and multilateral institutions must define protected digital domains, agree on crisis communication channels, and establish frameworks for emergency support. This is not about ceding sovereignty; it is about preserving it in an interdependent world.
It also means commitment toward closing the global AI capacity gap. When we invest in skills, compute pathways, and governance capability, countries become co-creators of AI’s rules and benefits, not passive consumers. Evidence shows this is possible. The DCOs Digital Economy Navigator 2025 demonstrates that progress accelerates when policy is intentional and inclusive.
International Digital Legitimacy also requires interoperable guardrails, shared norms that respect sovereignty while preventing fragmentation. The International Monetary Fund has warned that deeper global fragmentation could reduce world output by as much as seven percent of GDP. Legitimacy creates corridors for cooperation that transform this risk into shared prosperity.
Finally, it requires a new model of multilateralism that moves at the speed of innovation. We need agile, networked approaches that engage the private sector from the outset and prioritize practical coordination over years of negotiation. International Digital Legitimacy provides the foundation for faster, adaptive cooperation that keeps pace with technological change.
Why This Moment Matters
Behind every percentage point is a person.
A woman entrepreneur locked out of finance. A student unable to verify what is true. A hospital that cannot afford downtime. A community that deserves dignity, not digital dependency.
International Digital Legitimacy ensures that AI serves these people. It ensures that technology becomes a force for peace, stability, and prosperity rather than fragmentation and instability.
If we build legitimacy with the same ambition that we have built capability, 2026 can become the year multilateralism evolve to become more networked, more inclusive, and more effective. It can be the year tech diplomacy proves it can navigate the hardest questions of our time: how to enforce shared rules across borders, respect sovereignty while enabling cooperation, and move at innovation’s speed without sacrificing trust.
And it can be the year we demonstrate that even in a world of machine speed, human values still get the final word.
That is the future worth building. And 2026 is the year to begin.
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