The Networked World Order

And The New Shape of Power

I’ve been trying to educate myself lately. Properly, deeply. On the messy, tangled web of geopolitics as it crashes into technology, power, and what’s left of civilian freedom.

Not because I have answers. Because I’m trying to see the shape of the problem.

We’re watching democracies slide into authoritarianism in real time. We’re seeing AI accelerate without guardrails or any real understanding of what it will do to labour, truth, or autonomy. Power centres are shifting as new players rise and old ones decline, and the rules that governed the last seventy years are coming apart at the seams.

And it’s a clusterfuck. A moving, multi-dimensional clusterfuck where everything affects everything else and none of the old maps work anymore.

So I’ve been trying to draw a new one, because mapping it out - naming the nodes, tracing the dependencies, identifying the control points - is the only way I know how to think clearly about what’s coming.

This piece is the result of that work. My attempt to clarify what I’m seeing, in case it helps you see it too.

Because if we don’t understand the systems we’re operating within, we can’t navigate them. We can’t make good decisions. We can’t protect what matters. We just react, constantly, to forces we don’t understand and can’t name.

This goes back to what I wrote about in Strategic Sociopathy - the necessity of seeing clearly, even when what you see is uncomfortable. Especially then.

So take from this what you will. Push back where I’m wrong. Add what I’ve missed. But start here: the world is reorganising itself in ways that make freedom harder and control easier, and most of us aren’t noticing because the system is being built beneath the level of politics, in infrastructure and code.

Here’s what I think is happening.

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The world’s economic engine is starting to slow. For forty years, China supplied the labour, scale, and efficiency that made globalisation work. But that model is running out of road.

Within a few years, China will have more people over 60 than under it. There simply won’t be enough workers to keep its factories running or its exports flowing. As output falls and costs rise, the global price of almost everything - from electronics to energy - will start to climb.

Beijing knows this, which is why it’s racing to automate. But high-tech manufacturing requires exactly the demographic dividend China is losing.

And automation doesn’t solve the problem - it creates new ones. Robots don’t consume. An economy needs buyers, not just makers. As China’s workforce shrinks and ages, its domestic market - the engine that was supposed to drive the next phase of growth - shrinks with it. And aging populations don’t innovate at the same pace. The breakthroughs in AI, biotech, semiconductors - they come from young researchers, young engineers, young entrepreneurs taking risks.

Which means China can’t just automate its way out of this. It needs to shift from making cheap goods to making cutting-edge technology - the high-margin, high-value products that don’t require massive labour forces. But that means competing with countries that spent decades building the legal systems, financial markets, and research ecosystems that make breakthrough innovation possible. The U.S., Japan, Germany, South Korea didn’t get there overnight.

China is trying to compress decades into years. Flooding money into the gap, betting subsidies can replace institutions. But you can’t simply subsidise breakthrough innovation. The problem isn’t technology. It’s time.

Across the Pacific, the United States faces a different dilemma. It’s closing its doors to the world’s brightest minds - taxing skilled visas, policing social media, tightening entry. This is happening right as its tech sector is screaming for AI researchers, chip designers, and engineers. The talent pipeline that built Silicon Valley is being choked off by political theatre about immigration.

But at the same time, the U.S. is extending its reach abroad in a completely different way: building data centre partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE so that American cloud and AI infrastructure becomes the backbone of global computation. The strategy seems to be: make it harder to bring talent here, but make sure everyone elsewhere is building on American infrastructure anyway.

Short term, this creates a weird split. Domestic innovation slows as universities lose international PhD students and startups can’t hire the people they need. But American tech companies expand their footprint in the Gulf, building the infrastructure that will run everything from smart cities to national AI strategies. The Gulf gets cutting-edge capability without having to build it themselves. The U.S. gets geopolitical leverage and market access without having to station troops.

Long term, it’s a bet that infrastructure matters more than innovation. That controlling the pipes matters more than having the smartest plumbers. And maybe that’s right - if every country’s AI runs on American cloud architecture, the U.S. maintains control even if the breakthroughs happen elsewhere.

But the risk is real: the U.S. became dominant because it attracted the world’s best minds, who then built companies and technologies that reshaped everything. That advantage was never about having better infrastructure. It was about having better people, in an environment that let them build freely. Close the borders, and that advantage erodes. Export infrastructure, and you’re just selling tools to countries that will eventually build their own - or worse, to countries that will use those tools in ways that conflict with everything the U.S. claims to stand for (though what it now stands for is anyone’s guess).

Meanwhile, the Gulf states aren’t just buying data centres. They’re buying legitimacy for surveillance systems, for social control, for models of governance that are fundamentally opposed to democratic freedoms. And American companies are building it for them, because the alternative is letting China build it instead.

And those systems aren’t neutral. They never were. Every API call, every cloud instance, every AI query runs through architectures that can be monitored, throttled, or shut down. Infrastructure is policy. Code is control.

Trump’s AI plan makes this explicit. The administration is revising the NIST AI Risk Management Framework - the technical standards that define what counts as risk in AI systems - to eliminate references to misinformation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change. In other words: these aren’t problems worth monitoring or mitigating. AI systems can perpetuate lies, embed bias, and ignore planetary collapse, and according to the framework that governs their development, that’s not a risk.

This won’t be just U.S. domestic policy. These standards will get exported with the infrastructure. When American cloud providers build AI systems in the Gulf, when they partner with governments to deploy facial recognition or predictive policing, the ideological framework embedded in that code says: surveillance is fine, bias is fine, control is fine. What’s not fine is questioning power.

At the centre of this web sits Israel. The defence and intelligence node linking U.S. technology, Gulf capital, and Middle Eastern geography.

Here’s how it works. Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence corps, trains thousands of cyber and AI specialists who then seed the global tech industry, founding companies that get acquired by Palantir, Google, Microsoft. Israeli surveillance technology gets tested on Palestinian populations in the occupied territories, refined with real operational data from monitoring millions of people who have no say in the matter, then sold to Gulf security states and exported into U.S. intelligence architecture.

Israel sits at the geographic centre of this loop. The natural testing ground and bridge point between Western tech and Middle Eastern security states.

Which creates a bind. Criticising Israel threatens your own intelligence infrastructure. The AI and cybersecurity sectors aren’t adjacent to Western power, they’re load-bearing. The Abraham Accords are the red thread keeping Western influence anchored in a region the U.S. no longer wants to police directly.

So Washington keeps backing Israel even as the genocide in Gaza unfolds in real time, broadcast on our phones, undeniable and unbearable. Because Israel isn’t a political ally, it’s critical infrastructure. It connects U.S. technology to Gulf energy, Western capital to Middle Eastern stability.

In this networked world, capitalism talks louder than conscience. The system doesn’t care about atrocities. It cares about keeping the money flowing.

Europe sees all of this. It condemns in press releases while continuing arms sales and intelligence sharing. It writes strongly worded statements while its supply chains run through silence. Because Europe has a different problem: it remains economically strong but strategically dependent. And it knows it.

That’s why it’s pushing for technological sovereignty: Mistral as the answer to OpenAI, Gaia-X as Europe’s own cloud federation, the AI Act as regulatory armour.

But there’s a contradiction. Europe is building sovereign AI using American chips, Chinese manufacturing, and data centres that increasingly run on Gulf capital. Mistral’s models train on Nvidia hardware and leverage Microsoft’s cloud. Gaia-X participants include Amazon and Microsoft too. Sovereignty, it turns out, is pretty fucking relative when you don’t control the supply chain.

What Europe actually controls is standard-setting. GDPR became the world’s privacy baseline not because Europe enforced it globally, but because it’s cheaper for tech companies to build one compliant system than to maintain regional variants. The AI Act will work the same way. Not through hard power, but through the soft power of bureaucratic gravity and ticking the box of the hardest common denominator.

So Europe writes the rules for privacy and AI while relying on others for energy, manufacturing, and security. It controls regulation, not production. Legitimacy, but not leverage.

And that matters. Because rules without the ability to enforce them become mere suggestions. Europe can make the tech world jump through hoops, but it can’t make it jump in any particular direction. It can slow things down, make them more expensive, add friction. But it can’t build the alternative infrastructure that would give it real independence, yet.

Twenty-seven countries can regulate together. But they can’t move fast. They can’t fracture alliances. They can’t risk energy cutoffs. So they do what they can: regulate, audit, fine. Maintain the fiction of values-based policy while the architecture of control spreads beneath and beyond them.

But not everyone is stuck in Europe’s bind. Some countries are building the infrastructure itself. And in doing so, creating real leverage.

India is building the world’s digital plumbing. And it’s not a metaphor. UPI processes billions of transactions monthly, more than Visa and Mastercard combined. India is now exporting it as infrastructure to Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Aadhaar is the world’s largest biometric database - 1.3 billion people, fingerprints and iris scans linked to everything from bank accounts to SIM cards. And it’s become a template.

But what makes it truly powerful is that Indian tech talent operates the systems that Western AI relies on. The engineers moderating content, training models, labelling data, debugging code - they’re in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune. India doesn’t just own the code. It owns the workforce that maintains the code.

This creates leverage. Not the dramatic, overt kind. But the quiet kind that comes from being indispensable to daily operations. When India restricted data flows or tightened localisation requirements, tech giants didn’t pull out. They complied. Because the alternative was losing access to both the talent and the market.

But this does create vulnerability too. For Indian citizens, first and foremost. That same digital infrastructure - biometric databases, payment systems, linked identities - is a surveillance state’s dream. And India is building it in real time, without many of the privacy protections Europe spent decades constructing.

This isn’t theoretical. Your biometric ID is already required to access government services, open bank accounts, get a phone number. It’s being linked to everything. Which means the state can see everything. Track every transaction. Monitor every movement. Cut off access with a keystroke.

What gets built as efficiency can be wielded as control. And India’s government has already shown its willingness to use that control by shutting down internet access in Kashmir for months, using digital surveillance to track protesters, deploying facial recognition without consent or oversight.

The infrastructure India is exporting to other countries carries these capabilities with it. Just this week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with Aadhaar’s architect in Mumbai to model Britain’s new mandatory digital ID system on India’s approach. He called it a “massive success” and claimed it saves India $10 billion annually (a figure that’s been repeatedly disputed and criticised as incorrect). The UK’s “Brit Card” will be mandatory for employment. Surveillance architecture disguised as technological progress, ready to be replicated across democracies that should know better.

The efficiency and the control are inseparable. You can’t have UPI’s seamless payments without UPI’s centralised oversight. You can’t have Aadhaar’s convenience without Aadhaar’s biometric tracking.

So the question becomes: who else adopts this model? And what do they do with it?

The answer is increasingly: Africa. Because Africa has what everyone else is losing - a young, growing population that’s rapidly coming online. And that makes it the most valuable testing ground and adoption market for digital infrastructure in the world.

Africa is emerging as both a global cultural powerhouse and its demographic centre. Young, connected, ambitious. Afrobeats is global. Nollywood produces more films than Hollywood. TikTok’s fastest-growing markets are in sub-Saharan Africa.

This matters because platforms are nothing without audiences, and Africa will soon have more young people online than any other continent. And that’s not just market size, it’s cultural gravity. Whoever shapes African digital culture shapes global digital culture in twenty years.

But there’s a darker possibility lurking here too. Africa could become a data colony rather than a data power. Massive user bases generating training data for AI models built elsewhere, consumed on platforms owned elsewhere, monetised elsewhere. The extractive model of the 20th century, rerun in the 21st through fibre-optic cables instead of shipping lanes.

Because the infrastructure being built across Africa is deeply fragmented. Forty-five countries. Multiple language groups. Patchwork connectivity. No unified regulatory framework. No continental data governance standards.

That fragmentation creates space for manoeuvre - no single power can dominate the entire continent - but it also means Africa can’t act as a unified bloc. Can’t negotiate from collective strength. Can’t set terms.

Instead, individual countries cut deals with whoever shows up first with capital and promises. China builds the 5G networks. The U.S. pitches cloud partnerships. European firms sell fintech platforms. And tech billionaires partner with former Western leaders to offer “free” digital infrastructure.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle, working with Tony Blair’s institute, has rolled out digital health record systems in Ghana, Rwanda, and Senegal at no cost to those governments. Free electronic health records. Free cloud infrastructure. Free technical support. For now. The pitch is philanthropic - help developing countries build comprehensive digital infrastructure, track vaccinations, modernise healthcare.

But free isn’t free. Once a country’s entire health system runs on Oracle’s infrastructure, once every patient record lives in Oracle’s cloud, once doctors and hospitals can’t function without Oracle’s systems, then what? The pricing becomes commercial. Standard rates. Rates those countries can’t afford to pay but can’t afford to leave.

And Oracle gets something too: proof of concept. If the systems work in Africa, with fewer regulations, less scrutiny, populations used to having less control over their data - then why not roll them out everywhere else? Test it in Kigali, sell it in Kansas.

Each deal adds a dependency. A point of leverage. A node in someone else’s network. And once you’re locked in, extraction begins.

Africa isn’t unique in this. The same dynamic is playing out everywhere there’s something that the major powers need. Latin America, Southeast Asia, parts of the Middle East. Countries big enough to matter, positioned at critical chokepoints, but not unified enough to dictate terms.

Across these regions, a new class of nations is forming. The swing states of the next century. Too powerful to ignore, too fragmented to dominate.

What makes them swing states comes down to three things: scale, position, and options.

Indonesia. 270 million people, sitting on the Malacca Strait where 40% of global trade passes through. China offers to build ports, railways, and digital infrastructure through its Belt and Road loans. The U.S. offers membership in the Quad - a security alliance meant to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Indonesia takes both. Chinese money builds the infrastructure. American military partnerships provide the security guarantee. And Indonesia plays them off against each other while building its own digital economy on top.

Vietnam. The manufacturing alternative to China, already absorbing production from companies diversifying supply chains. But Vietnamese ports were built with Chinese loans too, its 5G network runs on Huawei gear, and its government studies the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism with great interest.

Mexico. As companies pull manufacturing out of China to serve North American markets, Mexico becomes the near-shoring destination - right on the U.S. border, integrated into American supply chains, cheaper labour. American investment is pouring in. But so is Chinese investment. And meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels have built their own encrypted communication networks - sophisticated enough to rival what the government operates - making them a parallel power structure the state can’t fully control. Mexico is caught between American security demands to crack down on those cartels and Chinese economic opportunity that comes with fewer strings attached.

Nigeria. Africa’s largest economy, a demographic giant. China built the railways and the telecoms. The U.S. wants to build the data centres. Meanwhile Nigeria is developing its own digital currency, its own identity system, its own path, trying to carve out sovereignty. But the infrastructure all of it runs on? Still foreign. The eNaira digital currency runs on blockchain technology developed elsewhere. The identity systems use biometric databases that could easily become surveillance tools. Nigeria has ambition and scale, but it’s building on someone else’s foundation.

Turkey. The bridge between Europe and Asia, the gateway between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. NATO member buying Russian missiles. EU candidate courting Chinese infrastructure investment. Authoritarian government, strategic geography, playing all sides.

These aren’t pawns. They’re platforms. And whoever builds on them shapes the network.

But each platform is also a trap.

Accept Chinese infrastructure loans and you’re locked into Chinese technical standards, Chinese suppliers, Chinese surveillance capabilities built into the backbone. Accept U.S. cloud partnerships and you’re operating on American legal architecture, subject to American sanctions, vulnerable to American policy shifts.

The swing states have options. But every option comes with strings attached. And those strings, over time, become chains.

Let’s step back and look at what’s actually happening here.

Power isn’t shifting neatly from one place to another. It’s being rebuilt into a network of dependencies where each region controls part of the system but none can run it alone.

The U.S. owns the operating system. China still owns the factories, for now. The Gulf owns the energy and capital. Israel anchors security (no matter the body count). India owns the code. Africa owns the audience. Europe owns the rules.

But here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: this system isn’t just economically interdependent. It’s architecturally authoritarian.

Every node in the network is also a point of control. Cloud infrastructure means your data lives on someone else’s servers, governed by someone else’s laws. AI systems trained on centralised datasets mean whoever controls the dataset controls the intelligence. Digital identity systems that link biometrics to bank accounts, social media, and government services mean surveillance is built into the backbone of daily life.

And because everyone needs everyone else, no one can use economic pressure to push for rights or freedoms anymore.

When Europe depended on Russian gas, it couldn’t push back hard on the invasion of Ukraine. When the U.S. depends on Israeli intelligence infrastructure, it took over two years of livestreamed genocide before any meaningful pressure was applied. The system resists accountability for as long as possible because the dependency runs too deep. When tech companies need Chinese manufacturing, they self-censor on Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong. When everyone needs Gulf capital for their climate transition, no one wants to talk too much about migrant labour or women’s rights.

Interdependence doesn’t create peace. It creates complicity.

The technology itself is the problem. You can’t build a biometric database without creating a tool for surveillance. You can’t construct linked payment systems without creating a chokepoint for control. You can’t deploy AI-powered content moderation without building the infrastructure of censorship.

The same tools that make life more efficient make dissent more difficult. The same platforms that connect people make it easier to monitor them. The same infrastructure that enables commerce enables coercion.

And it’s spreading. China exports not just its products but its model. Smart cities with facial recognition at every corner, social credit systems that link behaviour to access, firewalls that control information. Chinese tech companies build telecoms networks in Africa with surveillance capabilities baked in from the start. Gulf states purchase Israeli spyware and use it on journalists and dissidents. Western democracies build privacy-preserving surveillance systems that track everyone, all the time, just with better branding and a legal framework that makes it feel almost legitimate.

Networks sound clean. Efficient. But they’re fragile in ways empires never were.

What happens when Israel’s internal politics fracture? The judicial overhaul, the coalition chaos, the deepening divide within Israeli society - these aren’t just domestic issues. They’re systemic risks. Intelligence partnerships rely on institutional continuity. If that breaks, if the expertise scatters, if the relationships collapse, the network has no backup.

What happens when China restricts rare earth exports? It just did, this week. China controls 92% of rare earth processing - the materials essential for everything from F-35s to iPhones to electric vehicles. The US has one mine. Just one. And even what it extracts gets sent to China for separation because America doesn’t have the capability to do it itself. China adds a few elements to its export control list and suddenly the entire Western tech and defence industry is at risk.

In an empire, you conquer or you’re conquered. In a network, leaving means destroying yourself. And staying means complicity. Either way, you’re trapped.

The 20th century ran on empires of land and labour. The 21st runs on empires of infrastructure, held together not by trust, but by necessity.

This is both more stable and more unstable than what came before. More stable because no one can leave without destroying themselves. More unstable because there’s no central authority, no shared values holding it together. Just mutual dependence and mutual vulnerability (read: destruction).

Which means moral pressure doesn’t work anymore. You can’t boycott bad actors when you need them for your infrastructure. And you don’t need a global tyrant when all of this ‘progress’ enables total surveillance and algorithmic control. Liberal democracies are building it too. They just call it security or efficiency or personalisation.

The foundations are already built. The dependencies already locked in.

That’s the shape of the problem. That’s the map I’ve been trying to draw.

Now the question is: what the fuck do we do about it?