By Abeba Birhane, 18/02/2025 Following the first in Bletchley Park in 2023 and the second in Seoul in 2024, the third AI Action Summit took place in February 2025 in Paris. In the context of previous Summits, the French AI Action Summit signified progress in the right direction, with a diverse participation pool and focus on several of the most timely issues: 1) Public Interest AI, 2) Future of Work, 3) Innovation and Culture, 4) Trust in AI, and 5) Global AI Governance. Yet, a major gap remained: the Summit overlooked how AI is increasingly entangled with global market concentration, corporate power consolidation and state-backed surveillance and arms-race to AI-powered military domination. There was hardly any discussion about geo-politically regressive moves that are undoing decades of progress toward fundamental rights, peace and democracy–enabled by big tech corporations and powerful governments. In the larger context, this silence on the elephant in the room takes us two steps backwards.