Strategic uncertainty has become the baseline condition under which global politics and economics operate. Power is more dispersed, trust more fragile and stability more conditional than at any time since the end of the Cold War. This landscape begins with the structure of power. The international system has not settled into a stable multipolar balance, but into a form of strategic multipolarity defined by fluid alignments. The US–China rivalry remains central, yet it no long

China did not enter the 21st century as a newcomer to science and technology. It returned. China’s present confrontation with the West over semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and digital sovereignty is not simply a rivalry between latecomer and incumbent. It reflects  a much longer civilizational history  of technical power, institutional coordination, and state-directed knowledge production . No Western thinker did more to restore this depth of memory, and no one unset