Early Warning

Across NATO, the next generation of forces is being built around a decisive shift toward replacing fuel-based systems with electricity and high-performance batteries. From unmanned systems and smart munitions to mobile command posts and sensor networks, the Alliance’s deterrence posture is becoming electric. The move promises faster deployment, reduced noise signatures, and fewer supply convoys. Yet, beneath this technological progress lies a growing structural risk.   Every step toward electrification deepens NATO’s exposure to fragile supply chains and volatile critical-mineral markets. Batteries are now the linchpin of power projection, but also a potential weak point in it. The Alliance’s ability to fight, deter, and coordinate operations could hinge on materials mined or processed far from NATO’s control. As warfare becomes increasingly digital and electric, NATO faces a strategic challenge of a new kind: not how to innovate faster, but how to secure the energy backbone of its deterrence, and prevent the tools of modernisation from becoming instruments of dependency.

On Feb. 14 2025, a drone struck the protective shield covering Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine. The attack caused a fire and damaged the steel cladding. As of Dec. 6 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has formally assessed the site and reported that the New Safe Confinement has now “lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability,” meaning it can no longer guarantee that radioactive material remains fully contained. Ukraine has blamed Russia for the strike, which Moscow denies, while international monitors warn that the risk to global nuclear safety is rising.

Artificial intelligence systems and data centres have increasingly become an integral part of modern day society. A KPMG survey focused on AI use found that 66% of respondents use AI for work and personal reasons, of which 38% of respondents claim to use AI on a daily or weekly basis and 28% use it semi-regularly. According to these results, a majority of the respondents rely on AI to carry out day to day functions whether it be for work, study, or personal reasons. Moreover, the reliance on AI has been extended to governments, global financial systems, and states, as these entities rely on AI systems to improve efficiency and speed of services provided. This shows how AI has become integrated into the fabric of global society.   Now imagine one day all AI systems and programs cease to function. While the chances of such an event happening are low, it is not impossible and the consequences of being overly reliant on AI systems can be devastating. The consequences of a global AI shutdown will impact the global economy as well as global geopolitics, which could lead to trillions disappearing from the stock market and national security disasters across the globe.

The race for global dominance is no longer fought over land, oil, or military might, it is rapidly unfolding in the realm of data. Across the world, governments are fortifying their digital borders, investing in surveillance technologies, and rewriting laws to claim ownership over the information flowing through their networks.   What emerges is a contest not for territory but for control over the data that defines modern life, who produces it, who stores it, and who decides how it is used. This silent power race is redrawing the global order, creating new hierarchies of influence built on algorithms and infrastructure rather than armies. As states weaponise information, the battle for sovereignty is shifting from physical borders to the digital terrain of human behaviour.

The global world order is based on a solid, yet fragile foundation. While it is solid for being intact for decades with systems and organisations built around it, its fragility stems from the inability to predict the reason that will one day blow it up. Nuclear weapons constitute a cornerstone in this world order; those who possess the fatal weapon, “the nuclear bomb,” among other capabilities, are the ones who dictate the rules of the game. What is important to ask now is: with the huge advancements in science taking place every day, will nuclear weapons become obsolete?   Scientists have discovered ways of genome editing by which cells negatively affected by ionized radiation can be detected, repaired, and even engineered to become immune to radiation entirely. This raises profound uncertainties about the future. If the destructive power of nuclear weapons can be neutralized at the biological level, the foundation of nuclear dominance may begin to erode. This leaves us facing a series of difficult questions. Would the traditional leverage of nuclear powers still hold? If weapons of mass destruction (WMD) lose their strategic value, will a new form of deterrence take shape, or will the very concept of deterrence fade? Who might emerge as the next global power, and by what tools or technologies will influence be asserted? And perhaps most importantly: would today’s nuclear states allow such a transformation, or resist it fiercely to preserve their status?

In a world where reproduction no longer requires bond, lineage, or even parents, humanity has severed its oldest bond: the family. By 2070, governments no longer wait for couples to conceive, they manufacture life in humming factories of glass and steel, raising entire generations in artificial wombs. Children emerge without mothers or fathers, only the state and its machines.   Embryo Futures: Life Without Eggs or Sperm, a story from AHRC’s Futures Imagined series, envisions a tomorrow where population decline is met not with reform but with replacement. At once a tale of survival and of loss, it asks what becomes of identity, belonging, and love when society decides that human roots are optional.   Futures Imagined is a publication exploring emerging trends through imaginative forecasting. Rather than relying on strict methodologies, this piece invites AHRC writers to creatively narrate a possible future reality shaped by current developments.

China’s robotics drive is no longer just a story of factories becoming more efficient but a story of a new industrial revolution. Each year, hundreds of thousands of new machines are deployed across its production lines, reshaping global supply chains and altering the balance of technological power. For the Middle East and North Africa, this shift raises questions that cannot be postponed. Automation is moving from the margins to the centre of economic strategy, and regions that fail to build capacity risk being locked into systems designed elsewhere.   The future of robotics in MENA is therefore not only about who installs machines the fastest, but about who sets the standards, who controls the data, and who determines the terms of industrial competition. The region’s next chapter will hinge on whether it becomes a maker of the technologies that define the century, or simply a consumer of them.

“Poland is at its closest to open conflict since World War Two,” warned Prime Minister Donald Tusk, after a sudden Russian airspace violation rattled the country. On September 9, a swarm of Russian drones entered Polish skies, prompting NATO aircraft to scramble and intercept several of them. It marked the first direct encounter between NATO and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. While the incident might have been a test by Putin to gauge NATO’s and Europe’s response, it also raises the specter of a potential war between Poland and Russia. Given Poland’s critical role within NATO and the EU, far greater than Ukraine’s, the implications of such a conflict would place the entire continent in Jeopardy. The pressing question now is: how likely is this war to erupt, and would Europeans bear the brunt?

This Pulse survey, conducted in August 2025, examines public perceptions of the Arabic language and its role in shaping regional identity, security, and cohesion. The findings shed light on how populations view the weakening of Arabic as a potential threat, not only to cultural and social unity, but also to economic stability and national security. By exploring both immediate and long-term concerns, the survey provides valuable insights into how language is perceived as a pillar of resilience in the Arab world.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) managed to achieve a noticeable electoral victory against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the latest local elections that were held on 31 March 2024. However, the joy of victory did not last long, as the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested for corruption charges before being ousted from his position as the Mayor of Istanbul. The investigation into corruption charges revealed that the CHP leadership elections held on 4–5 November 2023, which resulted in the election of Özgür Özel as the party’s leader, might have involved illegal activities that could have jeopardised the transparency of the outcome. As a result, the Turkish judiciary is investigating this issue at the moment. On Monday, Sept. 15 2025, a Turkish court in Ankara held a hearing in a case questioning the legitimacy of the CHP’s 2023 leadership election (the 38th Congress), alleging irregularities like vote-buying, meaning that the outcome of the CHP leadership elections may be invalidated. If it happens, the impact on the CHP and electoral map in Turkey could be massive.

The idea of building floating cities at sea has long drifted between science fiction fantasy and Silicon Valley ambition, but in the late 2000s it developed into a real-world project known as seasteading. Presented as a bold libertarian experiment, it promised an escape from taxes, governments, and regulations, offering wealthy backers the chance to create new societies beyond the reach of any state. For its supporters, this was not about fixing broken systems but about starting from scratch in international waters, rewriting the rules in the name of freedom, innovation, and limitless possibility.   Yet as this idea edges closer to reality, the questions it raises grow more urgent: who are these new societies really for, and who will inevitably be excluded? In a world already marked by widening inequality and an accelerating climate crisis, floating cities may not look like visions of the future so much as warnings about the present.

Netanyahu’s ambitions are no longer confined to diplomacy or the pursuit of normalisation agreements. The Abraham Accords, once seen as his utlimate goal of his contemporary regional strategy, now appear irrelevant, cast aside in favor of a far more aggressive vision. What is unfolding is not the politics of peace but the politics of expansion, where no Arab country can assume immunity. The question of which state will be targeted next is impossible to predict, precisely because Netanyahu’s actions are driven less by rational calculation than by the confidence that comes with unconditional American support. Few could have imagined that Doha, with its U.S. military base and status as a close Washington ally, would be struck, yet it happened. This unpredictability signals a dangerous reality: the scale of war is set to widen, and any country in the region could find itself Israel’s next target.