The conflicts of the 2020s are legible through the same lens the wiki applies to peaceful transformation: where is a resource becoming abundant, where is it becoming scarce, and who controls the chokepoints in between. Unlike the industrial wars of the 20th century, contemporary confrontations are fought simultaneously across physical, digital, orbital, and informational terrain, with private firms, open-source communities, and states all holding consequential leverage. This framework article introduces the batch and states the editorial thesis that unites the entries that follow.
Abundance changes the shape of conflict
When a capability becomes cheap and widely distributed — imagery from commercial satellites, inference from open-weight models, propulsion from consumer drone parts — the advantage of incumbency shrinks and the advantage of iteration grows. This is the thread running through Drone Warfare, Information Warfare, and Cybersecurity as Civil Defense: abundance on the offense side is forcing defenders to rebuild doctrine in public, often with uneven results.
Scarcity returns as deliberate leverage
Even amid broad abundance, specific chokepoints — leading-edge semiconductors, certain critical minerals, high-bandwidth orbital slots, pipeline gas — have become instruments of coercion. Entries like Semiconductor Sovereignty and Energy Weaponization (Post-2022) examine how scarcity is manufactured and how abundance responses (reshoring, renewables build-out, recycling) are being accelerated in reply. See also Resource Scarcity and War and Energy Wars.
Private infrastructure as strategic terrain
Firms providing connectivity, compute, and payments now sit astride conflict zones in ways that states cannot easily substitute. Starlink in Ukraine is the canonical illustration, but the pattern extends to cloud providers, cybersecurity vendors, and model hosts. This raises open questions about legitimacy, accountability, and the limits of private-sector responsibility in wartime.
Open questions
The batch deliberately avoids forecasting outcomes. Will abundance-driven asymmetry stabilize deterrence or destabilize it (see Deterrence by Abundance)? Can contested commons like low Earth orbit and the information environment be governed without either balkanization or capture? Do Climate Conflict pressures compound or eventually discipline the others? These remain live, and the articles flag where consensus does not yet exist.