Technological Disruptions and the New Geography of War

The contemporary transformation of warfare is marked by a series of technological disruptions that are redefining both the instruments of conflict and its temporal and spatial dimensions. In earlier eras, revolutionary weapons—from gunpowder to the atomic bomb—reshaped power balances. Today, change is accelerated by the convergence of emerging technologies that blur the boundaries between civilian and military domains. Autonomy, hypersonics, additive manufacturing, neuroscience, quantum computing, and the “weaponization” of civilian technologies together constitute this new revolution. The impact extends beyond armed forces: it affects society at large, global economies, and the very nature of deterrence. These disruptions generate a battlefield that is more complex, distributed, and unpredictable, where military superiority depends less on scale and more on the quality and speed of innovation.