How technology shapes power

In the early 15th century, the world still moved by hoof and sail. But within the walls of the Ottoman Empire, something formidable was taking shape. Not armies. Not treaties. But bronze. Cast into massive cannons and shaped with precision, these machines were designed not merely to breach walls, but to break centuries.

For over a millennium, the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople had withstood empires — but in the Ottoman arsenals, under the weight of innovation, they had already begun to tremble.

History, when studied closely, does not move only through treaties or battles or ideologies. It moves through invention. Through gears and wires, fire and code. It is not that power seeks technology; it is that technology creates power.

The pattern repeats itself with almost ritualistic precision.

The Industrial Revolution, for instance, was less a chapter in a history textbook than a cosmic reshuffling of power. In a century, Britain moved from being an island on the edge of Europe to the centre of the world. Steam engines, textile mills, and railroads became the arteries of a new empire — one not built merely on conquests, but on machines.

The British navy, equipped with ironclads and powered by coal, could project power across oceans. The sun didn’t set on the British Empire because it was divinely ordained — but because it was mechanically enabled.

In the same century, nations that failed to adapt found themselves relegated to the margins. The Mughal Empire in India, once wealthy and formidable, was caught in a web of traditionalism and courtly excess. It had muskets, yes, but not factories. Its artillery was ornate but outdated. It had no railroads, no telegraph lines and no industrial base.

In contrast, the British East India Company, essentially a corporation with a standing army, wielded the cutting edge of Europe’s industrial machinery. The result was predictable. One civilisation was overtaken not by superior ideology, but by superior logistics.

The 20th century took this logic and amplified it with electricity.

World War I introduced tanks and chemical weapons. World War II was the theatre of radar, codebreaking, and ultimately, the nuclear bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not merely tragedies — they were technological exclamation marks.

The US emerged from the war not just victorious, but scientifically ascendant. The Manhattan Project, which birthed the atomic age, wasn’t just a military endeavour — it was a declaration of leadership in a new global order. From then on, science and statecraft became indistinguishable.

As the cold war set in, the arms race shed its obsession with quantity and turned toward progress. Sputnik’s 1957 launch by the Soviet Union didn’t just breach the atmosphere, it pierced the global imagination. Space was no longer the realm of stars and silence; it was now strategic territory. The moon landing, the intercontinental ballistic missile and the satellite communication network all became instruments of both influence and imagination.

But the true paradigm shift came not with rockets, but with transistors.

In the second half of the 20th century, a silent, silicon revolution began humming in the labs of California. The microchip shrank computing power from rooms to palms. The internet turned borders into bandwidths. And once again, those who innovated ruled.

The US, home to Silicon Valley, became not just a military hegemon, but a digital one. American companies Google, Apple, Microsoft and Intel rewrote the rules of economy, culture, even cognition. Information became the new oil. Data became the new currency. And those who controlled the flow of both found themselves sitting atop an empire without maps.

The rise of China in the 21st century follows the same pattern.

Beijing’s transformation from a manufacturing hub to a technological competitor is not accidental. It is strategic. ‘Made in China 2025’ is not merely an industrial policy, but a blueprint for supremacy. With massive state investment in AI, quantum computing, 5G infrastructure, and semiconductor independence, China seeks not to challenge the old order on its terms, but to create a new one. The battlefields are now cloud servers. The missiles are algorithms. The new Great Game is played not over territory, but over patents, standards, and chips.

This is the age of technonationalism. Nations are not just investing in research — they are guarding it like treasure. Semiconductor supply chains are now national security concerns. Cyber warfare units are as vital as air squadrons. Technological embargoes function like economic sieges. The battlefield may have become digital, but the logic is medieval: control the tool, control the world.

Pakistan, like many developing nations, must read this arc not as spectators but as participants. Our geopolitical anxieties, energy debates, even education policies are shadows cast by our technological lag.

We cannot build a strong economy without innovation. We cannot assert sovereignty without data security. And we cannot hope to rise regionally, let alone globally, if we treat science as a luxury rather than a pillar.

The history of global powers is the history of applied knowledge. Those who wield technology not only change their destiny but alter the very definitions of power. The printing press once made kings irrelevant. The internet today challenges the nation-state itself.

And as we step into the uncertain terrain of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, one lesson remains enduring: the future does not belong to the most powerful armies. It belongs to the most advanced laboratories. Technology is not a tool. It is the terrain.

The writer is an academic, journalist and policy analyst from Islamabad. He can be reached at: siddique.humayun@gmail.com