POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Learning Innovations
This article is part of the Research TopicArtificial Intelligence in Educational Technology: Innovations, Impacts, and Future DirectionsView all 12 articles
AI, Education and Digital Sovereignty
Provisionally accepted
Shereen Hamadeh1
Hira Amin2*- 1NEOM University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 2Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly being embedded into all aspects of human life, reshaping everything from mundane daily human interactions to national military strategies. With AI technological capabilities are limited to only a handful of parties, nations must grapple with the effects of relying on foreign technology on their own digital sovereignty defined as a nation's ability to control its digital infrastructure, data flows, and epistemic frameworks. This paper traces the recent AI educational policies of China and the United States – the world's leading economic and technological powers. Analyzing state discourse, policies and governance between 2017 and 2025 this paper argues that the new AI race has revitalized the discourse on digital sovereignty. AI education is now a core feature of national security, workforce competitiveness and cultural sovereignty. This framing elevates AI from a tool of innovation to an instrument of geopolitical power, and places education, skills and capacity building at the heart of this strategic landscape.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, digital sovereignty, National sovereignty, Geopolitics, Technology
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 04 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hamadeh and Amin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hira Amin
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