Polyconflicts

TLDR; the concept of Polycrisis is inadequate for describing the realities of 2025. Instead, we must shift to the concept of "Polyconflict," which better captures the enduring, structural nature of contemporary global challenges. Unlike crises, which imply a moment of acute instability requiring resolution, conflicts are ongoing struggles for power, resources, and survival.

A few months later, the news caught up with the idea.

I keep saying that the polycrisis is giving way to polyconflict; that climate change is primarily understood in polycrisis terms (if at all that) but we should prepare for it to metastasize into a polyconflict. This week's news has, sadly, strengthened my hypothesis.

When war came to the Gulf in 2026, I went back to it one commodity at a time.

I don’t think there’s an overarching frame that explains all polyconflicts. At least not yet. Every unhappy dispute is unhappy in its own way. Instead, the conflict must be traced node by node, commodity by commodity.

After helium, metformin and firewood, I turned to the one under all of them.

But there’s a polyconflict that underlies them all, the mother of all polyconflicts, so to speak: Artificial Intelligence.