AI Warfare's Transformed Landscape

AI enabled warfare. Traditional International Relations theories are insufficient. Realism is blind to internal technological capacity, and Liberalism failed to theorise the weaponisation of interdependence. The new terrain of power is the Sovereign Substrate: the globally integrated technological stack of semiconductors, undersea cables, AI models, and biological data. Control over this substrate is the new prerequisite for national power. To lack control is to exist in a state of Coercive Dependence, a form of Digital Vassalage. The idea of a separate "cyber domain" is a dangerous illusion. The digital and physical worlds have fused. Modern conflicts are not fought in cyberspace but through the integrated fabric of our digitally mediated reality.