essay
by GILLES LIPOVETSKY
If nuclear weapons symbolized the total war of the previous century, contemporary technological and strategic transformations herald the advent of a new form of conflict: hyperwar. The concept of hyperwar emerged at the turn of the 2000s. A defining feature of the era of superpower dominance and the ultimate stage in the transformation of warfare, hyperwar is characterized by the extreme technologization of its operations. Artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, autonomous drones, networked weapons systems, and digital technologies now lie at the core of military strategies and operations. This central role granted to technology is reshaping the very nature of military operations, which are gradually freeing themselves from the sole requirement of physical presence on the battlefield.
Within this framework, the technological tools mobilized far exceed human capacities, particularly along three fundamental dimensions: computational power, reaction speed, and the processing of massive volumes of data — well…