In my experience across two decades of maritime litigation, the law has always been about territory. We deal with flags – the flag state determines which nation’s laws apply when a dispute arises. Whether we are arguing jurisdiction in an Admiralty Court or determining the rules governing salvage rights, we seek clear boundaries: who owns this water, and whose law governs what happens here.

But the global movement of commerce is now being managed by technology that has no flag state, no physical territory, and certainly no traditional national sovereignty to claim. I am referring to advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems running on interconnected networks – the very infrastructure making modern shipping possible. And this raises one of the most fundamental legal challenges in maritime history: Where does jurisdiction lie when the activity is purely digital?

The reality is that current international law struggles immensely with AI-driven incidents. If a vessel’s navigation system, controlled by an AI service provider based in Country X, misreads weather data and causes a collision with another ship operating under the laws of Country Y, where do we file suit? Which national court has the authority to make a binding ruling over the code that caused the accident?

The Three Pillars of Legal Chaos

The problem is not simply assigning blame; it’s about establishing the legal ground upon which to build a case. I have identified three key areas where our current legal framework is severely outmatched by emerging AI capabilities:

Firstly, Jurisdictional Nexus. Traditionally, jurisdiction was established through physical presence or commercial activity within a nation’s waters (the ‘long arm of the law’). An AI system, however, operates virtually everywhere simultaneously. Its data flows cross multiple national borders instantly and without physical touchpoints. This means that defining the “site” of the legal injury – and therefore which court has the authority to hear the case – becomes functionally impossible under current treaty regimes.

Secondly, Data Ownership and Chain of Custody. Every accident involving these systems will generate vast amounts of proprietary data: sensor readings, predictive modeling outputs, network logs, etc. Legally, we must know who owns that raw data – the ship owner, the AI developer, or the data provider? The ability to secure, audit, and prove the integrity of this digital evidence is paramount; without it, any case collapses before it can properly begin.

Thirdly, Defining State Responsibility. As global powers increasingly rely on interconnected maritime infrastructure (like shared 5G networks or centralized traffic control), the potential for state-sponsored cyber interference – a nation-state attempting to destabilize a rival’s shipping routes via code – is immense. The legal mechanisms to attribute such an attack, and hold that sovereign power accountable in international waters, remain virtually nonexistent.

A Lawyer’s Mandate: Preparation is Your Only Defense

For any sophisticated maritime organization – whether you are managing a small fleet or running large commercial cargo lines – you must fundamentally re-think your risk management approach. We cannot wait for the inevitable major incident to force regulators to act.

We must proactively establish rigorous contractual and technical safeguards. This includes demanding that all AI service providers include comprehensive, internationally recognized liability waivers into their contracts, detailing who assumes financial responsibility if a failure is traced back to their algorithms or software updates. Furthermore, companies must adopt mandatory, standardized digital protocols for data logging, making the evidence trail legally ironclad from the outset.

Ultimately, John Wolf sees this as a profound shift in commercial law: we are moving from physical law to information law. The greatest vulnerability of tomorrow’s fleet will not be structural; it will be informational. Those who master the legal framework surrounding AI data – by anticipating jurisdiction disputes and securing digital evidence before an accident even happens – will be the only ones equipped to navigate the turbulent waters ahead.