Widespread wars, conflict as an environment

An artificial intelligence model shut down for reasons of national security. A European package on technological sovereignty centred on chips, the cloud, AI and open source. Two Australian sugar mills brought to a standstill by a cyberattack, forcing the sugarcane harvest to halt. A deepfake simulating a brawl between the Governor of the Bank of England and Nigel Farage to promote a financial scam. Rare earths turned into a bargaining chip in the competition between the United States and China. At first glance, these are different episodes: technology, industry, agriculture, information, international trade. In reality, they tell the story of the same transformation. Contemporary conflict no longer needs to be declared to produce strategic effects because it is enough for it to inhabit reality: access to a model, a production chain, a platform, a standard, a raw material, a credible image.

This is the nature of what I refer to in my latest book as ‘diffuse wars’. Not ‘hybrid’ conflicts in the traditional sense, where a central authority coordinates various means to achieve a recognisable objective, but dispersed, intermittent forms of conflict – often below the threshold – that permeate everyday life without completely disrupting it. Their power does not always lie in destruction, but in their ability to make the world less reliable.

Widespread warfare does not replace traditional warfare: it surrounds it, paves the way for it, and accompanies it. It is an environmental condition rather than an event, and as such has no formal start, no declaration, no flag, and no front line. Often, its battlefield is what we depend on: digital infrastructure, energy, logistics, payments, the cloud, semiconductors, data, standards, reputation, trust. In the twentieth century, power flowed mainly through places; today it also flows through connections. Where there is dependence, there is potential leverage, and there a form of coercion.

This is why cyberspace is no longer a technical sector, but a grammar of conflict. An attack on a hospital, a port, an agricultural company or a software provider does not merely affect computers, but social functions as well; and the attack surface increasingly coincides with that of everyday life. The target is not necessarily the symbol, but continuity. There is no need to conquer a territory if one can render its reality intermittent.

The same applies to technology. For decades, we have portrayed it as a neutral tool, an extension of human will. But chips, the cloud, artificial intelligence models, platforms and networks are not merely tools: they are architectures of possibility. They determine what can be done, at what speed, at what cost, and under what conditions of dependence. When access to a model is restricted for reasons of national security, a cognitive customs barrier is being imposed.