Return of Caesars: Chips, Memory, and the Pacific |
Imagine, on one side, solar-powered AI satellites operating in deep space, with orbital internet feeding into ground robotics, going to grind the world’s productivity, connectivity, and even philosophy into a unified whole.
On the other, the rise of protected expansionism among world powers shows a drift back into the grooves of kings and empires. Despite remarkable advances in language models and communication, human political dialogue remains inefficient, largely governed by power’s enduring romance with imperial trivialities of interest and identity.
As a result, two geopolitical flashpoints with memories of conflict—the Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe— are strategically hyperactive. Until the turn of the twentieth century, both regions stood at the crossroads of empires: Imperial Japan and China in the East, and the Russian Tsars, Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Prussians across Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
In September 2025, China’s 80th World War II anniversary parade at Tiananmen Square—10,000 troops backed by a $244.99 billion defense budget, two million PLA soldiers, three aircraft carriers, and a projected 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030—was read in Washington as a declaration of a new China-led trade and security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. The choreography and camaraderie among leaders from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea marked the beginning of a new declaratory phase in Beijing’s vision of Eurasian integration and a multipolar order.
Two days earlier, President Xi presented alternative global statesmanship at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, calling for a “more just and equitable global governance system.” Addressing leaders representing 43 percent of the world’s population and 23 percent of global GDP, Xi chose a city heavy with symbolism: Tianjin—a vital crossing point on the Grand Canal connecting the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, and a gateway to the Bohai Sea. It was the same city where the humiliating Treaty of Tientsin was signed in 1858 after the Second Opium War, forcing China to grant trade concessions to Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia.
The Tianjin message was clear: achieving strategic balance in the South and East China........