Why the war surrounding Iran may only be a prologue to a far more brutal struggle for energy, algorithms, vulnerabilities, and power over the new world system
The world is once again speaking the language of old wars: missiles, fleets, oil, straits, aircraft carriers, sanctions, closed-door negotiations, threats, and demonstrations of force. Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, US President Trump, China, oil prices, and the fear of a massive regional conflagration - all of this looks like a classic Middle Eastern crisis where stakes are measured in barrels, ships, bases, and the price of a political mistake.
However, the current moment has a second layer - less spectacular, almost invisible to a mass audience, but strategically far more dangerous. While the world counts tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, another reality is growing in the shadows: the geopolitics of artificial intelligence. This is not a trendy conference topic, a Silicon Valley toy, or a startup market, but a new architecture of power. In this architecture, whoever controls computation, data, algorithms, vulnerabilities, data centers, and the energy base of digital infrastructure gains more than just an economic advantage. They gain the ability to see faster, attack faster, defend faster, manage faster, and break an opponent's systems faster.
This is precisely why the war surrounding Iran is not just a story about the Middle East. It is a stress test for the global system at a moment when old and new forms of power overlap. An oil strait and a software vulnerability now belong to the same strategic map. A missile base, a data center, a shipping route, an energy grid, banking infrastructure, satellite intelligence, and an autonomous bug-finding algorithm are already elements of a single battlefield.
The underlying logic is simple and brutal: if Hormuz demonstrates how much the physical economy depends on narrow geographic passages, then next-generation systems capable of detecting software vulnerabilities show how much the digital economy depends on invisible weak points in code. In both cases, the issue is the same: control over vulnerability. Whoever can find, exploit, create, or neutralize it gains power over the behavior of other players.
On the surface, the crisis looks familiar: Iran has endured strikes, the Strait of Hormuz is threatened, the US is projecting force, China is watching, markets are nervous, and allies are calculating costs. This picture is important, but it is incomplete. The real question is different: who can turn the crisis into a managed strategy, and who will become a hostage to their own actions?
The United States can strike harder than any other player. This is beyond doubt. But the force of a blow is not yet a strategy. The wars of recent decades have repeatedly shown that destroying an object is easier than building a political result. It is easier to annihilate infrastructure than to change a regime's behavior. It is easier to declare victory than to retain allies when energy prices, insurance rates, budget expenditures, and domestic voter irritation rise.
Iran, conversely, does not have to win in a classic military sense. It only needs to make a US victory expensive, nerve-wracking, incomplete, and politically questionable. This is the logic of asymmetric resistance. Mine threats, drones, missiles, proxy networks, pressure on shipping, energy blackmail, and periodic provocations are not tools for defeating the American military. They are tools for prolonging the crisis.
China is in a more delicate position. It has no interest in the total destruction of energy stability because it depends on resource imports. However, it is interested in demonstrating the limits of American power. If Washington gets bogged down in the Middle East, depletes its munitions, irritates its allies, is distracted from the Indo-Pacific, and appears as a force capable of destroying but not finishing, Beijing gains a strategic profit without firing a direct shot.
This is the new logic of great powers: sometimes it is more profitable not to enter a war, but to watch a competitor raise the price of its own leadership.
The Erosion of Alliances and the Energy Trap
The Strait of Hormuz has long been a symbol of energy vulnerability. A significant portion of the world's seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas passes through it. For Asia, this is not an abstraction. Japan, South Korea, China, India, and other major consumers watch every movement in the Persian Gulf closely because a disruption in Hormuz instantly turns into a question of prices, inflation, currencies, industrial competitiveness, and political stability.
A short-term disruption can be survived. Markets know how to panic, but they also know how to adapt quickly. Strategic reserves, alternative routes, insurance mechanisms, diplomatic channels, and supply redistribution all reduce the severity of the first blow. But prolonged instability works differently. It does not just raise the price of a barrel; it changes the calculations of states.
If a US ally depends on supplies through Hormuz and sees the crisis dragging on, they begin to ask uncomfortable questions. How long will this last? Does Washington have a clear end goal? Who will pay for the economic losses? Why should a specific country's energy security be sacrificed for a strategy whose contours are not always clear? How can they reconcile solidarity with the US and the protection of their own industry?
This is where the true erosion of alliances begins. Not through loud ruptures, not through a demonstrative refusal of partnership, and not through anti-American declarations. Everything happens more quietly. Countries begin to hedge. They expand contacts with China. They seek energy agreements outside the Western perimeter. They increase stockpiles. They revise logistics. They conduct dual diplomacy, saying one thing while doing another.
For Washington, this is more dangerous than direct criticism. Direct criticism is visible and can be addressed. Hedging is more dangerous because it grows as a habit. And habits in international politics often outlive the crises that birthed them.
The Chinese Strategy of Strategic Inaction
In such situations, Beijing rarely acts impulsively. Chinese strategy prefers the accumulation of advantages over a dramatic gesture. In the case of the Iranian crisis, China has several levels of interest.
The first is energy. China is interested in ensuring the Persian Gulf does not explode completely. Total chaos in Hormuz would also hit the Chinese economy. Therefore, Beijing will not recklessly push the situation toward catastrophe unless it sees an extreme necessity.
The second is political. An Iran weakened by sanctions becomes a more dependent partner. The fewer options Tehran has, the more space there is for Chinese bargaining. Discounted oil, infrastructure projects, military-technical channels, diplomatic cover, and settlements outside Western mechanisms can all be strengthened without a formal alliance.
The third is strategic. Any overextension of American resources in the Middle East reduces US concentration on the Indo-Pacific. The Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, US alliance networks in Asia, and technological restrictions against China remain the primary theater of a long struggle for Beijing. If Washington is forced to spend political and military resources in the Persian Gulf again, China gains a window for maneuver.
The fourth is ideological. Beijing can promote the thesis that the US remains a force creating instability, while China offers predictability, infrastructure, and trade. This thesis does not have to be true in every detail. It only needs to be convenient for countries tired of sanctions, wars, energy shocks, and demands to choose a side.
This is why Chinese passivity is not equivalent to inaction. Sometimes strategic inaction is a form of participation.
The primary advantage of the United States is not just its military. It is a network of alliances, the dollar-based system, a technological foundation, intelligence capabilities, control over a significant portion of the global financial infrastructure, and the ability to rapidly form coalitions and set rules. However, this power has a vulnerability: it requires constant proof of effectiveness.
The US can strike Iran. It can tighten the blockade. It can deploy additional forces. It can achieve the temporary suppression of certain Iranian capabilities. But if the aftermath remains a blurred picture - neither war nor peace, neither surrender nor a sustainable agreement, nor a clear security architecture - allies begin to perceive American policy as a source of uncertainty.
The problem is not that allies will immediately defect to China. That is a simplistic view. The real world is more complex. European and Asian partners of the US do not want to live under Chinese dominance. They understand the risks of dependence on Beijing. But they also do not want to pay an unlimited price for a strategy in which Washington itself cannot always explain the endgame.
For the administration of US President Trump, this is a particularly delicate issue. His political style is built on demonstrations of force, bargaining, pressure, and personalized diplomacy. Such an approach can yield quick results. However, in crises with a long tail, the deciding factor is not just the ability to intimidate an opponent. It is the ability to maintain the system: allies, markets, the military, Congress, public opinion, regional partners, and negotiation channels.
If forceful pressure does not translate into a political result, it begins to work against the one applying it.
The Invisible Connection: Hormuz and the Code of Power
At first glance, the link between the Strait of Hormuz and advanced artificial intelligence systems seems strange. What is the common ground between a maritime route and algorithms capable of finding vulnerabilities in software? In reality, they share more than it appears.
Both Hormuz and these systems speak to a single problem: the global economy has become too complex, too interdependent, and too vulnerable. In Hormuz, the vulnerability is physical: a narrow maritime passage through which vital supplies flow. In the digital world, the vulnerability is hidden in code. Banks, communications, water treatment, energy grids, cloud platforms, logistics, government services, industrial systems - all depend on software that contains bugs.
Until recently, finding such errors required highly skilled specialists, time, resources, and luck. If artificial intelligence begins to autonomously identify thousands of vulnerabilities, the balance between attack and defense shifts. Not completely, not instantly, and not magically, but seriously enough that central banks, financial regulators, security services, and tech corporations have begun to view this topic as a systemic risk.
The danger is not just that AI can assist hackers. That is too narrow a framing. The main danger lies in acceleration. What used to take months may now take days. What once required a team of specialists may become accessible to smaller groups. What used to be a localized cyber incident could turn into a mass search for weak points in infrastructure.
Thus, the question of national security ceases to be a question for the military alone. It becomes a question of code quality, update speeds, access to computation, trust in suppliers, cloud architecture, talent reserves, AI regulation, and the state's readiness to protect not just borders, but the digital fabric of the economy.
The New Industrial Revolution: Data Centers as the New Factories
Comparing artificial intelligence to the Second Industrial Revolution seems accurate but incomplete. The Second Industrial Revolution gave us electricity, steel, the chemical industry, mass production, railroads, the telegraph, new forms of capital, and new armies. It transformed the state, society, warfare, ideologies, cities, and labor.
AI changes the system faster. Politicians have less time to adapt. Business implements technology faster than regulators understand the consequences. Military structures test autonomous systems faster than international law can provide answers. Financial markets evaluate company values faster than energy systems can provide electricity for data centers.
This is not just a technological transition. It is a redistribution of power between states, corporations, and networks of specialists. A country possessing cheap electricity, powerful data centers, access to advanced chips, talent, capital, data, and cyber expertise gains an advantage comparable to that of an industrial power at the beginning of the 20th century. Only now, the acceleration cycle is shorter.
In the industrial era, factories produced cannons, ships, locomotives, cars, and tanks. In the AI era, data centers create models that can design materials, optimize logistics, manage intelligence, analyze battlefields, find vulnerabilities, automate bureaucracy, accelerate scientific discovery, and amplify propaganda.
Energy is once again becoming the foundation of power. Only now, it feeds not just factories, but computation.
The Currency of Power: Oil, Gas, Electricity, and Chips
After the Iranian crisis, many will speak of oil again. This is natural. But the energy agenda is already broader. Oil remains the lifeblood of transport, the military, and industrial logistics. Gas remains the foundation of power generation, chemicals, and heating. Electricity is becoming the key resource of the digital economy. Chips are becoming the tool for accessing the future.
These four currencies of power are intertwined. Without stable oil, transport costs rise. Without gas, electricity becomes more expensive. Without electricity, data centers do not function. Without chips, there are no advanced AI models. Without AI models, the speed of analysis, design, intelligence, cyber defense, and industrial modernization decreases.
This is why the crisis in Hormuz is important not only for oil traders. It is vital for technological competition. If energy markets enter prolonged stress, the cost of powering data centers rises, the economics of AI change, costs for cloud companies grow, the struggle for power grids intensifies, and interest in nuclear power, renewables, storage, new gas contracts, and regional energy corridors accelerates.
In such a system, energy security becomes part of technological security. And technological security becomes part of military security.
Three Paths for the Crisis
Several scenarios for the development of the crisis are possible.
Scenario One: An Anxious Peace Formally, the parties avoid a major escalation. Hormuz remains open but stays a high-tension zone. The US believes it has inflicted sufficient damage on Iran. Iran claims it has stood its ground. China does not intervene openly but collects economic bonuses. Markets calm down but do not relax. This scenario seems manageable, yet it does not solve the main questions: what happens to the Iranian nuclear program, how will Tehran's behavior change, is Washington ready for a new phase of pressure, where is the red line for China, and how long are allies willing to tolerate a repetition of the crisis?
Scenario Two: China's Quiet Strengthening Beijing decides that the limits of American actions create an opportunity for more active support of Iran. This is not necessarily direct or loud, but rather through intelligence, dual-use technologies, logistics, diplomatic cover, financial schemes, raw material purchases, and infrastructure channels. Iran recovers faster. Sanctions pressure loses some of its effectiveness. The US is forced to keep more resources in the region. China shows the Global South that American pressure can be survived if there are alternative economic and political pillars.
Scenario Three: America Goes All the Way and Pays for Victory If negotiations fail and Iran resumes harsh pressure, the US may choose a more decisive line. This means the systemic destruction of Iran's missile, drone, naval, and nuclear infrastructure, clearing threats around the strait, tightening the blockade, and possibly applying pressure to the regime's stability. Militarily, the US is capable of inflicting colossal damage. But the question is the price. Such a campaign would require munitions, time, political concentration, allied support, and a readiness for unforeseen consequences.
Scenario Four: The Third Front of Global Struggle
The most dangerous variant is a simultaneous, decisive US campaign met with active indirect intervention by China. In this case, the Middle East ceases to be a regional crisis and becomes the third front of a global struggle, alongside Ukraine and the Taiwan Strait. China could increase pressure in the South China Sea. Russia could expand military-political coordination with Tehran. North Korea might seize the moment to demonstrate force. Iran would leverage energy blackmail. The United States would then face the challenge of simultaneous containment across multiple theaters.
Even if Washington achieves military success, the strategic outcome may prove to be Pyrrhic: depleted munitions, divisions within alliances, energy shocks, a rise in anti-American sentiment, and the strengthening of ties between Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang.
The Metrics of Success and Failure
The United States wins only if it converts military pressure into a political result: the sustainable limitation of Iranian capabilities, keeping Hormuz open, disciplined allies, the containment of China, and a clear exit strategy. The US loses if it demonstrates force without a finality. In that case, every strike becomes an argument not only against Iran but against the reliability of American strategic planning.
Iran wins not through victory, but through survival. If the regime endures, the nuclear issue remains unresolved, Hormuz remains a lever of pressure, and China and Russia expand their support, Tehran can frame its defeat as resilience. Iran loses if it is stripped of its key military capabilities, loses control over escalation, and becomes excessively dependent on external patrons.
China wins if the US exhausts its resources, allies grow nervous, Iran becomes cheaper as a partner, and Beijing maintains the appearance of a responsible observer. China loses if the crisis destroys energy stability, provokes a rigid consolidation of the West, and accelerates anti-Chinese military planning in Asia.
Europe loses under almost any prolonged energy shock. Its weak point is the combination of dependence on external energy, industrial sensitivity to prices, and the political fatigue of its societies. Europe can win only if the crisis accelerates real diversification, infrastructure development, LNG capacity, interconnectors, and strategic reserves.
The Gulf States gain more attention, guarantees, and bargaining power. However, they also find themselves in the high-risk zone. Their wealth depends on exports, and exports depend on the security of routes. For them, the conclusion is obvious: a need for multi-vector policies, strengthened air defense, maritime security, alternative pipeline routes, and a diplomatic balance between the US, China, and other power centers.
For many countries in the Global South, the crisis will serve as further evidence that the global economy is still governed not just by rules, but by vulnerabilities. They will seek discounts, workaround schemes, new suppliers, currency alternatives, and more flexible alliances - not out of ideology, but out of necessity.
The Five Great Delusions of the Modern Era
The Delusion of Regional Isolation: The greatest mistake is to believe that the crisis around Iran is limited to the Middle East. It is not. Hormuz is tied to Asia, Europe, inflation, insurance, industry, currencies, and technological competition.
The Delusion of Overt Action: The second mistake is to think that China must act openly to influence the outcome. Dose-calculated support, the economic absorption of a weakened partner, and diplomatic patience are sufficient.
The Delusion of Automatic Victory: The third mistake is to believe that military superiority automatically translates into political victory. The history of recent decades has proven the opposite at a very high price.
The Delusion of Separating Energy and AI: The fourth mistake is to decouple energy from artificial intelligence. AI requires electricity, data centers, chips, cooling water, grids, and resilient infrastructure. An energy crisis directly impacts the technological race.
The Delusion of Technical Cyber-Risk: The fifth mistake is to view cyber vulnerabilities as a purely technical problem. In a world of AI systems capable of accelerating the search for weak points, this is a matter of national security, financial stability, and strategic deterrence.
What Should We Monitor? Indicators of the New Reality
First and foremost, we must watch for the factual, rather than declarative, stability of shipping through Hormuz. What matters are not just official statements, but insurance rates, tanker routes, transit delays, naval escorts, and the actual behavior of shipowners.
The second indicator is the nature of Chinese support for Iran: oil purchases, financial workarounds, diplomatic rhetoric, technological transfers, military-to-military contacts, and logistics. These factors will reveal whether Beijing remains an observer or becomes an active participant.
Third is the state of American alliances. Japan, South Korea, European energy importers, the Gulf States, and India are particularly crucial. Their public declarations are less significant than their practical steps toward diversification and hedging.
Fourth is the price dynamics of more than just oil. We must track LNG, freight, insurance, electricity, and critical components for data centers.
Fifth is the pace of cyberspace militarization. If states begin to covertly restructure their doctrines due to AI-driven vulnerability discovery systems, it will signal a major transition to a new stage of conflict.
Sixth is the behavior of tech corporations: restrictions on access to powerful models, increased vetting, collaboration with governments, new cybersecurity standards, and rising defense expenditures.
Seventh is the internal state of the Iranian system. The external resilience of a regime does not always equate to internal stability. The economy, elites, security apparatus, public frustration, and regional influence networks will play a role no less significant than missiles.
Crisis as a Catalyst for Change
This crisis carries more than just risks; it can serve as a catalyst for critical decisions. For the energy sector, it is an opportunity to accelerate the diversification of routes, reserve development, LNG infrastructure expansion, grid modernization, and investment in nuclear power, storage, and resilient regional corridors.
For cybersecurity, it is a chance to shift from a reactive model to a continuous audit of critical infrastructure using AI-powered defense. If the attack accelerates, the defense must accelerate as well.
For diplomacy, it is an opportunity to forge a more realistic deterrence architecture where military pressure is accompanied by a clear political exit.
For business, it is a chance to rethink supply chains, insurance models, digital resilience, and dependence on single routes or suppliers.
For middle powers, it is an opportunity to increase their strategic value. Countries capable of providing transit, energy, digital infrastructure, diplomatic mediation, and regional stability gain new bargaining power.
Strategy Beyond Force
In this situation, it is not enough for the United States to formulate purely military goals: to strike, weaken, block, coerce, or destroy infrastructure. Allies do not need the language of force; they need a coherent political finale. They must understand the purpose of the costs they bear, how long the crisis might last, what result is deemed acceptable, and where the line is drawn between demonstrating resolve and being dragged into a conflict without a clear exit.
It is time for Europe and Asia to stop treating the Strait of Hormuz as a rare accident that happens far away and eventually dissipates through the efforts of the US Navy and oil traders. Hormuz is a permanent risk embedded in the global economy. Consequently, strategic reserves, long-term gas and oil contracts, LNG capacities, alternative routes, insurance mechanisms, and procurement coordination must become standard state policy rather than an emergency reaction.
Even deeper lies the necessity to integrate energy and digital security into a single strategy. Data centers, power grids, cyber defense, cloud platforms, undersea cables, water systems, banks, ports, and critical infrastructure can no longer exist in separate bureaucratic silos. In the era of artificial intelligence, electricity is not just a utility; it is the raw material for computational power. And computational power is becoming the ultimate tool for intelligence, governance, cyber defense, cyber attack, and industrial competition.
Financial institutions must also redefine their understanding of resilience. Banking stability has long depended on more than just capital, liquidity, rates, and asset quality. It now depends on the security of software systems, the speed of code updates, the reliability of suppliers, and the ability to withstand mass, AI-accelerated vulnerability searches.
Technology companies will have to more honestly define the red lines for access to dangerous AI capabilities. The issue is no longer about public image or flowery declarations of responsibility. It is about preventing systemic attacks on the infrastructure upon which banking, energy, transport, communications, and government administration depend.
Reliability as a Form of Influence
For middle powers, this new world presents rare opportunities alongside threats. Countries that can become reliable hubs for transit, energy, logistics, cyber resilience, and diplomatic mediation will gain additional weight. In the new geopolitics, value is found not only in the size of an army or GDP, but in the ability to ensure the continuity of flows - goods, energy, data, finance, and political communication. Reliability itself becomes a form of influence.
The war around Iran may end in an agreement, a pause, a new escalation, or prolonged uncertainty. Hormuz may remain open, return to being a subject of blackmail, or become a chronic risk zone. The US may project strength, China may play the long game, Iran may survive, and allies may begin cautious hedging.
However, a larger picture is already emerging behind these events. The world is entering an era where power is defined not only by the ability to control territories, armies, and resources. Increasingly, it is defined by the ability to understand an opponent’s vulnerabilities faster than they understand their own.
Hormuz is a vulnerability of geography. Code is a vulnerability of the digital economy. Data centers are a vulnerability of energy. Alliances are a vulnerability of trust. Markets are a vulnerability of expectations. States are a vulnerability of institutions. Whoever learns to weave these layers into a single strategy will shape the rules of the next decade.
The world watches the tankers, but the future is decided elsewhere. It is decided in server rooms, power grids, insurance tables, closed diplomatic channels, AI laboratories, cyber command centers, and the offices of those who first realize that the new geopolitics is not a struggle for slogans, but for control over the points of failure in the global system.