Geopolitics today is like a video game–technology is power in the new world order
Imagine the world like a video game. To win the game, the most powerful player has to not only build a virtual world, but preserve the ability to change the settings of the game whenever they like — similar to what engineers would call God Mode.
That’s what geopolitics looks like today to Portuguese politician and philosopher Bruno Maçães. And the winner of this video game will be the next hegemon, he said.(Lost Mary os5000 luster)
Maçães recently discussed his book, World Builders: Technology and the New Geopolitics, at India International Center with diplomats and former foreign secretaries Shivshankar Menon and Shyam Saran. The talk, titled Geopolitics at the End of Time, centered around how technology is forcing a new world order to emerge — one in which it’s not yet clear who’s going to come out on top.
“The present world order is unravelling,” explained Maçães. “Who’s going to win, the US or China? We don’t know yet, because the game is still unravelling.”
Technology and geopolitics are the same for him. Being a leader in technology means geopolitical control, and geopolitics represents countries jostling for power in a technological world. From the millions of financial transactions happening every second to the internet and all it encompasses — the new world order, according to Maçães, hinges on technological superiority.
“Geopolitics is about making and creating a world, and technology is the same,” said Maçães, explaining that his reading of modern history is that power comes from technology. “It’s a virtual world today, and having control over this world is more important than control over physical territory.”
A new energy revolution
The traditional way to exercise power and hegemony has changed with the introduction of nuclear energy — it’s not possible to replace a hegemon as easily as it might have been in the past.
And China realises that, said Maçães.
“There’s an energy revolution waiting to happen,” he stressed. “And we don’t know who’ll win.”
The panel talked of the previous energy revolutions that have changed the way the world works: The coal-and-steam-powered industrial revolution in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, and the electricity and factory model of production in the United States in the 20th century.
Today, the new sources of energy to be capitalised upon are solar energy and artificial intelligence, said Maçães. It’s why China has invested so heavily in developing new technologies, and why the innovation of DeepSeek has disrupted the Western world so much, he emphasised.
“In many respects, the country that’s going to rule the world is the country that’s going to connect two things and make it work: solar energy and AI.”
The panel discussed why China is such an interesting touchpoint for the rest of the world. The question everyone was asking was whether China would become a completely self-dependent technological power, and how that would impact the rest of the world. It’s now a race, said Maçães, to see who will move faster — China or America.(Lost Mary Vape)
It’s what makes the idea of China as a global leader in the coming years so compelling. Menon pushed back on Maçães’ theory that a world order must exist to maintain some balance. But both strands of the argument converged on the idea that China would indeed have a hand in “building” a new world, and that it would most likely be virtual.
“All great powers, whether they want it or not, have to take on ruling the world. You either rule or are ruled,” shrugged Maçães.
