By Irakli Machaidze
Armenia is reassessing its national security foundation with the evident aim of replacing military might with economic power as the central pillar for ensuring sovereignty.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is a leading advocate of remaking Armenia’s security architecture. “When the army is your primary tool for security, you could say you have no security at all,” he said at a September conference dedicated to security issues. “The military should be the last tool in the security system. And the more tools you have before it, the better.”
Pashinyan wants to make a strong economy the most powerful instrument in his national security toolkit. The $500-million plan to build the region’s first artificial intelligence hub in Armenia highlights Pashinyan’ strategy. The initiative took a major step forward in November when US regulators approved the transfer of advanced Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.
The project, led by Firebird, a startup apparently bankrolled by an ultra-wealthy member of the Armenian diaspora, is backed by the Armenian government.
The operating model gives Yerevan a substantive stake in how future AI capabilities develop in the region. That matters as AI moves deeper into sensitive sectors such as healthcare, finance and national security. AI has been described as the 21st century version of electricity, with GPU farms compared to generators: Armenian officials and experts believe that building a big lead in this area will foster a deep sense of security.
