In 2005, 20 years ago, I master Thirstby Mausi Martínez, where Adolfo Pérez Esquivel – Nobel Peace Premium – warned that the next wars would be for the water. Ironically, water is left over. Once we solve the necessary energy to describe the oceans and the environmental impact of the recycling of the brine, the problem will be solved. Although perhaps the solution passes through a more expensive and exclusive method, such as the extraction of meteorite water, maintaining the resource in the hands of a few.
While wars for water remain part of the geopolitical equation, another resource has gained even greater value. An inexhaustible, but capable of molding the future of entire nations in the right hands – or wrong. That resource is the data. And as all the fundamental for humanity, also awakens those passions that lead humans to the worst extremes.
To measure traffic, it is enough with real time satellites or, as browsers do, analyze the movement of users. If many devices stop or move slowly, the system detects a bottling. Simple, right?
But this principle goes much further. From social networks to financial markets, everything generates data. Before we could barely capture them; Today we store them in mass. The true revolution is that, thanks to artificial intelligence, we find patterns where we only saw noise.
The jump is not only in accumulating data, but in analyzing them on a unthinkable scale and speed. 20 years ago, satellite images only filed information; Today, AI detects in real time humanitarian crisis, military movements or diseases in crops before they are visible.
This capacity not only describes, but predicts. With sufficient data, the AI anticipates economic trends, detect protests before they occur and foresee political decisions analyzing changes in discourse. Computational power is no longer just a tool: it is the prism with which we interpret reality and mold the future. In the twentieth century, the power of nations was measured in oil, gold or weapons. In the XXI, hegemony depends on the domain of the data and the ability to process them.
Competition is no longer only for natural resources, but for telecommunications control, cloud infrastructure and AI architectures. China understood it by developing its own digital infrastructure and restricting access to its data. The United States concentrates its power in technological corporations that process more information than many governments. Europe tries to balance the balance with regulations such as the GDPR, which seek to limit indiscriminate access to their citizens’ data.
If power has always been linked to knowledge, in the era of artificial intelligence, the absolute power will have those who control the interpretation of the data. But this raises a fundamental dilemma: if the machines can find patterns and anticipate events, who decides which are important and which ones should be ignored?
This is the true conflict of our time. It is no longer just who possesses the information, but who decides what is real and what does not. In a world where algorithms can amplify narratives, predict behaviors and model decisions, the battle for data control is, ultimately, a battle for the control of reality itself.
What happens when the strategic data of a country – its history, its resources, its social and economic behavior – are no longer under their control? Today, many governments depend on foreign infrastructure to store and process their most sensitive data. From cloud servers to decision -making algorithms, digital sovereignty is becoming as crucial as territorial sovereignty in past centuries.
Countries that do not ensure control over their own data will be condemned to live under the rules of those who do.
Will the upcoming wars be for the data or will the data handle the ones that direct them?
By Sergio Rentero
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