In its attempts to modernize and improve its levers of control, Azerbaijan has been building the architecture of a modern digital state, with cybersecurity training pipelines, AI roadmaps, cross-border tech partnerships. At a February 9 ceremony for the Azerbaijan Cybersecurity Centre, government officials framed this rapid digitalisation as a technocratic success story. Deputy minister Samir Mammadov touted gains in online government efficiency, competitiveness, and service delivery, while simultaneously warning that expanded information systems widen exposure to cyber threats, data confidentiality, integrity, and system vulnerability. T The AI push has been packaged in the same way, as a means of consolidation, centralization, and strategic intent to prepare Azerbaijan for the future and technological advancements. President Ilham Aliyev’s “Artificial Intelligence Strategy for 2025–2028” has been described by government-aligned analysis as a shift from scattered pilot projects to coordinated state management, with AI slated for banking, agriculture, transport, and public administration. Azerbaijan has rapidly risen in global “AI readiness” rankings, however there are significant constraints. Most importantly, there is no mature national language models, there is limited high-performance computing, scarce high-quality Azerbaijani-language datasets, and a shortage of senior engineers who can actually build AI systems, rather than simply operate others. The government’s answer is external partnership: Israel, South Korea, European actors, and outreach to Silicon Valley for cloud, data infrastructure, and implementation know-how. The issues with this increased AI implemtation is not with the technical shortages but rather the political consequences. Regime critics have argued that in systems where power is centralized and accountability is negotiated rather than enforced, digital transformation tends to modernize the state’s coercive capacity faster than it modernizes public trust. Researcher Samira Alakbarli warns that the global AI race is also a contest over values: where democracies debate guardrails, authoritarian regimes often absorb the same tools into surveillance, profiling, and deterrence. The reference points are notabke, mainly with AI-enabled monitoring in China and Russia, it has become far too easy for authoritarian regimes to target and root dissidents, opposition figures, and ordinary citizens alike. The most unsettling and significant aspect of this recent push is the centralization of domestic data. A “Centralised Information and Digital Analytics System” was reportedly created within the State Security Service in late 2024, with its founding regulation briefly posted and later removed, and was described as aggregating expansive personal data, including biometrics, location, health, education, and employment information. Evidently, this system was not a neutral administrative upgrade, but rather the backbone of a comprehensive infomartion aggregating initiative. In the absence of independent oversight, systems like these enable patterning, prediction, and pressure on citizens. At the same time, Azerbaijan’s alleged past use of Israeli-developed spyware against journalists and activists has only sharpened the concern, as well as the broader crackdown (since late 2023) in which dozens of journalists and civil society figures have repeatedly been arrested on foreign currency smuggling charges that are reported to be politically motivated.