The Shifting Balance of Power: Asymmetric Warfare, AI, and the New World Orders(Rewritten Version)
The 3-to-1 Rule of Combat
In traditional military strategy, the "3-to-1 rule" dictates that an attacking force requires three times the strength of a defending force to succeed. Historically, defense has always held the advantage.
The Post-WW2 Hierarchy
Following World War II, the P5 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) established a global hierarchy backed by massive military power. Today, however, the cost of defending this traditional hierarchy is skyrocketing, while the cost of offensive disruption is plummeting. Modern asymmetric warfare—driven by inexpensive drones and sophisticated cyber capabilities—enables smaller actors to inflict massive financial and strategic costs on major superpowers.
The ROI of the Hierarchy
Consequently, the Return on Investment (ROI) for superpowers trying to maintain this traditional, top-down global hierarchy is no longer justifiable or attractive.
Wait, do we want WW3?
So, where does this leave the rest of the world? Do we want World War III to act as the catalyst for systemic change? Absolutely not. We need the global interconnectedness of the WWW (World Wide Web), not the devastation of WW3.
The Solution
We are caught in a dilemma: the world can no longer sustain the post-WW2 hierarchy, yet we must avoid another global conflict at all costs. We must establish a new global order peacefully. Frameworks like BPS and GPP (detailed in my GitHub repository) offer potential blueprints for this transition.
The Problem
Historically, capitalism relies on "creative destruction"—breaking down the old system to birth the new. The ultimate challenge for both humanity and AI today is to transition to a new global operating system without going through that destructive phase.
The Conditions for the Solution
I believe the key to this peaceful transition lies in the hands of the EU and other non-superpower nations. Currently, the US and China dominate hyper-scale AI infrastructure. The EU and other nations lack these massive facilities, which paradoxically serves as their strategic advantage. By not bearing the astronomical capital and maintenance costs of these infrastructures, they can reap high technological returns at a fraction of the cost, ultimately enriching their own economies.
How to Leverage This Position
How can the EU and others accomplish this? While the US and China are formidable negotiators, they desperately need vast customer bases to sustain their costly AI infrastructures; scaling down is simply not an option for them. If the US and China begin to struggle with these maintenance costs, the EU and other nations can strategically position themselves as indispensable customers, thereby gaining immense geopolitical and economic leverage.
The Future
In the future, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will emerge to autonomously and optimally allocate computational and electrical power across the globe. If the EU and other nations step into this "resource allocator" role today—balancing and mediating the flow of resources between the US and China—they will not only secure their own prosperity, but they will also provide a real-world model for AI. In essence, the diplomatic and economic balancing act of the EU today will serve as the textbook from which future AGI learns to manage our world.
Furthermore, the EU holds immense regulatory power (the "Brussels Effect"). By defining the rules of AI usage without paying for its hardware, they extract maximum value.