Airbus supervisory board chair René Obermann has called for international guardrails on artificial intelligence, arguing that the technology needs a global agreement to remain controllable. Speaking in Berlin, he framed the issue as a geopolitical and industrial priority and said the initiative should be driven by the United States and China, with Europe, India and others included.
Obermann warned that the pace of AI development requires binding hard rules, but he also argued that Europe’s current approach is too rigid and should remain adaptable as the technology evolves. He compared the need for AI governance with the containment of nuclear weapons, and linked the urgency to the rise of autonomous hacker attacks powered by AI models. For Airbus, the debate reaches beyond policy and into cyber risk, engineering, operations and wider regulatory strategy across aerospace and advanced manufacturing.