Securitising AI: routine exceptionality and digital governance in the Gulf

Abstract This article examines how Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states securitise artificial intelligence (AI) through discourses and infrastructures that fuse modernisation with regime resilience. Drawing on securitisation theory (Buzan et al., 1998; Balzacq, 2011) and critical security studies, it analyses national strategies, surveillance systems, and mega-event governance in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It argues that AI functions as both a legitimising narrative and a technology of control, embedding predictive policing and biometric surveillance within public–private assemblages. The study situates these developments within global AI politics, demonstrating how external chokepoints, ethical frameworks, and vendor ecosystems shape the Gulf’s evolving security governance, leading to empirical effects such as the normalisation of exceptional measures in everyday administration.