As the Trump administration begins its four year mandate and war continues to rage in Ukraine, the precarious geopolitical landscape remains the primary focus for many resource sector watchers and participants.
Day one of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference began with a panel on the global geopolitical outlook. Moderated by event host Jay Martin, the participants explored major trends poised to impact the resource sector.
Starting the 30 minute discussion, Dr. Pippa Malmgren, an economist, noted that the current geopolitical landscape is characterized by “hot wars in cold places” — meaning that the major conflicts are taking place in areas like space, the Arctic and the Baltic, rather than the traditional “boots on the ground” battles often associated with war.
While Malmgren sees the war in Ukraine ending, she warned of another larger-scale conflict.
“I think that we’re going to end up with a deal between the new White House and China and Russia, and what will happen is the visible war will subside, but the war for the technological frontier will accelerate — and that is where the fight is,” she told the audience. “It’s for quantum computing, it’s for nanotechnology, it’s for space.”
This technological front also extends to the deep sea, according to Malmgren. She explained that on January 6, 2022, the fastest internet cable in the world, which connects satellites to earthly networks, was cut.
Located near Svalbard, Norway the undersea cable has been “unexpectedly severed” several times.
“Luckily, we had so much redundancy built in that that event did not become visible to the public, but the militaries understood this is effectively an act of war,” said Malmgren.
Framing the narrative on conflict
For Dr. Pascal Lottaz, it’s important to frame conflict in the right way.
The associate professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Law explained that while the world is experiencing different phases of cold wars, he hesitates to frame everything as a “war” since it dilutes the meaning of the term. A better way to describe the current global landscape is through the lens of a “security competition.”
Lottaz added that competition is particularly intense among the US, Russia and China, and is playing out across various domains, including technology. The critical question is whether these rivalries will remain at a level where actions like cutting undersea cables are the worst consequences — serious, but far from catastrophic.
The danger is that tensions could escalate into open conflict. In fact, the world is in one of the most perilous periods of modern history, arguably the most dangerous since the Cuban Missile Crisis, said Lottaz.
He said these concerns keep him up at night, because some factions no longer view nuclear war as an unthinkable scenario. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction only works if all parties believe in deterrence; if one…
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