New Socio-political Challenges to State Sovereignty in the Digital Age (Based on the Materials of an International Expert Study)

This study aims to determine the extent of the substantive nature of the dependence of contemporary state sovereignty on technological development in the field of artificial intelligence and neural network technologies, as well as to identify new socio-political challenges to Russia’s state sovereignty in the context of global digital technological transformations. As a methodological lens, the method of critical discourse analysis of thematic academic studies was chosen, as well as the method of expert interviews. This made it possible to more deeply reveal the substantive features of influence of artificial intelligence technologies and neural network algorithms’ development processes on the contemporary state sovereignty parameters. Based on the results of the study, by the aggregation of the results obtained, the authors concluded that a whole range of challenges to the sovereignty of the contemporary state related to technological development in the digital sphere has formed, as well as there is the high influence of digital technological development processes on the state sovereignty of Russia. The main challenge for our country is the thesis that a state unable to create independent and competitive technologies, products, and solutions in the digital sphere will inevitably be in direct technological dependence on other states, which directly affects the ability to provide its own sovereignty and independence.