This Week on Portsmouth Point - Zero Hour: Detonation Protocol
by Max B, Year 12
Will we see a third world war in the next decade?
The ever-evolving global landscape of 2025 is snowballing into an increasingly unsteady and uncertain picture. Power rivalries (Between the USA, China, and Russia) rage on, not only in the media, but in covert shadows, cyberspace and spy warfare. According to an Atlantic Council survey, 40% of global experts expect a world war by 2035. Meanwhile, 65% predict China will forcibly retake Taiwan within a decade. These statistics illustrate a cold and disquieting reality: the world is no longer insulated from Cold War-style confrontation. Civilisation as we know it, and the wider political landscape of the world, is under threat from a new era of conflict and tensions, patiently awaiting eruption.
A significant cause of these tensions and broad predictions of mass-scale conflict originates from already existing (smaller scale) wars, which have proven divisive in recent years. This can be seen, most obviously, in the Ukraine-Russia war, which is now entering its fourth year. A conflict which has already resulted in staggering losses (over 1,300,000 casualties) and with both parties still locked firmly in a war of attrition. Similarly, volatility in the Middle East has also proved politically divisive on a global scale. From Israel-Hamas and Iran-Israel clashes to potential Lebanese collapse, the region remains a pressure cooker. Adding to these already established conflicts, China continues to operate in a grey zone of coercion and incursions in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. In fact, there is a 60% chance of a cross-strait conflict by 2026. A small miscalculation here could drag the US, Japan and their allies into an explosive confrontation. Adding a bow on top of this perfectly packed tinderbox, the UN and their capacity to de-escalate conflicts are dwindling fast, leaving little hope.
Yet, the world has managed not to enter into a mass conflict since the end of the Second World War in 1945. So, the question being repeatedly pondered is, “what would a 21st-century world war look like?” The first change is the new capabilities and derived popularity of fibre optic drones. Ukraine’s recent Spiderweb drone operation destroyed (approx.) 13 Russian long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory, using 117 FPV drones. Such operations are low cost (under $10,000 per drone) yet capable of crippling billion-dollar systems and nuclear capabilities of large geopolitical powers. Battle systems are also becoming increasingly accurate, with new technologies allowing countries to blend satellites, sensors, open-source intel and battlefield intelligence into AI-enabled targeting systems, as seen used by Ukraine. Excentuating this landscape of tech-based warfare, Russia alone aims for 30% of its combat power to be AI or remote-enabled by 2030. Yet, although this may mean fewer human casualties on the front lines, fully autonomous weapons reduce thresholds for aggression, inevitably leading to more frequent low-intensity clashes that could spiral into major wars.
The doomsday clock sits at 89 seconds to midnight, the most perilous position since the Cold War. The World Economic Forum now ranks state-based armed conflict as the No. 1 global risk, supported by $2.4 trillion in military spending and 60 active conflicts, with 120 million displaced people living amid violence. And whilst governments pump endless funds into rearmament, like Keir Starmer's recent defence budget increase and Europe’s turn towards modern startups and defence systems, the world remains worryingly unprepared.
If Taiwan triggers US involvement and Ukraine pulls NATO deeper, the world risks a conflagration across the Pacific, Europe, and beyond. Nearly half of the forecasters believe Nuclear weapons will be used should a global war break out over the next decade. Setting a precedent for the future, experts expect military conflict in space to come, with battles beginning far before boots touch soil.
The 21st century is morphing into a shape which is both eerily ancient in approach and profoundly alien in appearance: familiar human bloodshed, now layered with autonomous machines and AI-driven tactics. Civilisations' benchmark is no longer just territory; it may soon be measured in algorithms.
We now find ourselves perched on a terrifying precipice: drift into blind, uncontrolled innovation, and the tools of war may just outrun the hands which pull their triggers.
Despite an increasingly nationalistic agenda which is fast sweeping through Europe through extremist right-wing parties, there is no nation to fight for when a country is buried under rubble.
There will be no flags in the ruins.
