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A European citizen observing the world around them in 1924 might have pleaded for it all to stop. An epochal war, a pandemic, the fall of four empires – including a Russian one – a Fascist

government in power in Italy and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate, all in the first two decades of the 20th century. A British observer might also have felt the loss of, at the time,

the longest reigning monarch and a sense of novelty about the election of a Labour Party prime minister. A comparison with a global citizen in 2024 doesn’t need to be forced: an epochal war

in prospect, a pandemic, the fall of a Soviet empire and the rise of a Russian one, Trump or Biden. A British observer might also feel the loss of the longest reigning monarch and would

undoubtedly be curious about the novelty of the possible election of a Labour Party prime minister. But this is not a homily on history repeating itself. If it was, I might throw in 1824: an

epochal war, end of the Bonapartist imperium… Rather, this is about the increase in the velocity of change in, well, just about everything, but I will concentrate on the global strategic

environment, communications and the interplay between the two. If we accept Graham Allison’s view, contained in _The Thucydides Trap, _that rising powers inevitably tend to conflict with

established powers, then war in 1914 was probably a long time coming. Perhaps from the creation of the German Empire in 1871, Germany and Britain were destined to reprise the roles of Sparta

and Athens. A case could also be made that what started in 1914 did not end until 1945, as Europe became convulsed in a second Thirty Years’ War. Eric Hobsbawm claimed in _The Age of

Extremes_: _The Short Twentieth Century _that the energies released in 1914 were not exhausted until 1991. But let’s not be picky: the point is that we have tended to think that the

strategic environment operates to a long rhythm, defined by decades and sometimes centuries. But that assumption has not survived the 21st century. In 24 years we have lived through three

strategic epochs: the lingering legacy of the Cold War, the Wars of 9/11 and the multipolar confrontation we are living through today. Not only that, but each has displayed quite different

characteristics. The Cold War had an imperial quality, as a confrontation between two empires; the Wars of 9/11 did not even directly involve opposing state actors, but still provoked the

West into spending its power; while today a loose alliance of autocracies faces an equally loose alliance of democracies as both try to manage domestic politics, and, at the same time, vie

for the support of what has become known as the Global South. This feels different and at its heart is a fundamental increase in the velocity of change. If that is true in terms of the

strategic environment, it is overwhelmingly the case in terms of communications. I am not competent to chart the successive technological epochs that mark the progress from the inception of

social media to the mass application of Artificial Intelligence. I can, though, sum up the aggregate effect by shamelessly plagiarising the view of others, who have observed that social

media has reduced the cost of transmission to zero and that generative AI has taken the cost of material generation to zero, creating a capacity for disinformation that is literally

limitless. A rapidly changing strategic environment, therefore, shaped by the promiscuous capabilities of communications, will create an almost exponential challenge to international

regulation and an equally exponential opportunity for global mischief. None of this is helped by the supine response of the regulatory authorities. Draft European legislation goes some way

to holding Big Tech to account and further than the proposals contained in the Online Safety Bill in this country. But neither set of provisions will touch the problem until decisive

legislative action is taken in America, where divisive politics and the competitive advantage of light regulation combine to discourage Congressional intervention. So let’s turn to the

interplay of the strategic and communications environments. Two of the most consequential events of our times have been the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington DC in 2001 and those

against Israel on 7th October last year. The first was planned by a group of people who seemed to spend a lot of time in caves, the second planned by a group of people who seem to spend a

lot of time in tunnels. Both illustrate the fact that strategic impact does not need the apparatus of a state to be effective. Rather, it needs a sense of strategic theatre and an

understanding of the accelerant potential of communications. No matter how shocking and new they appeared at the time, both acts were drawing on a tradition that originated in the late 19th

century. “The Propaganda of the Deed”, of which 9/11 is probably the definitive example, was a recurring theme of both Russian and German anarchist writers, though I doubt Osama bin Laden

ever regarded Mikhail Bakunin as his spiritual antecedent. Taking the spirit of irony one step further, the extreme wing of 19th-century anarchism regarded death in the act of assassination

as the supreme gesture, as it held both lives in equal contempt. Whether the Islamist terrorist leader Mohamed Atta knew he was following a secular European tradition as he piloted American

Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Centre remains a matter of speculation. Meanwhile, state actors have adapted the dissembling possibilities of particularly digital

communication to create disinformation as a central component of hybrid warfare – the relentless, insidious competition that exists below the threshold of conventional war and is being

prosecuted on a global basis, daily. And the ubiquity of social media has made this process so much easier. With the arrival of Twitter & YouTube on the scene (2005) followed by Facebook

(2006), Instagram (2010) and TikTok (2017), a mix of unregulated fantasy and opinionation, legitimised by the occasional fact, has replaced the regulation and (more or less) strict

editorial guidelines of the mainstream media (BBC, CNN et al). The result has been to compromise trust in all media; in the BBC’s case, a fall of about 20 points since 2018. This is the

inevitable consequence of a flight to social media platforms as the main source of news by 47% of the British adult population and 71% of 16 – 24 year olds, a demographic trend that can only

reinforce the primacy of social media sources in the longer run. In turn, this has hugely inflated the lobbying power of vested interests and created the phenomenon of agenda journalism,

where activists seek out evidence that supports their special interest and discard the rest. Taken together, these various trends create a fertile and global ground for disinformation, to

which democracies tend to be more susceptible than autocracies. The revered broadcaster, journalist and frequent contributor to _TheArticle_ John Ware laments this process with recourse to W

B Yeats: “_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_ _…. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity_”. And

it’s about to get worse, as the latent possibilities of AI are more fully revealed. In terms of conflict, cheap and intelligent technology already sits inside the millions of drone platforms

possessed by both sides of the war in Ukraine. The glittering and potentially decisive prize Ukraine and Russia are competing for now is to marry that capability to AI in order to create an

autonomous mass, capable of dominating the contemporary battlefield. In terms of communications, the infinite capacity of social media and generative AI has already been noted and its

effects are already being felt. We are therefore entering a world where conflict and communications, separately and in combination, are potentially moving beyond human agency. A MESSAGE FROM

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