“Wars: Testing Grounds for AI and Cybersecurity | Barbara Carfagna”

Two years ago, in Nagorno-Karabakh, there was nothing: villages razed to the ground, five million mines, and unstable borders between Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia. Today, on those same lands, brand-new communities are springing up, built at a speed never seen before. It was not bulldozers or traditional urban planning that worked the miracle: the reconstruction was orchestrated by artificial intelligence, with autonomous agents assigning tasks, planning, managing logistics, and even deciding whom to invite to the inaugurations. Here's the game changer: In today's wars, the real battle is no longer played out only on the battlefield, but in the way things are rebuilt afterward. Those who train the artificial intelligence models that plan the rebirth of a region hold an enormous lever of power, one that is far more pervasive than the old U.S. Marshall Plan. And security is no longer an armor placed over things that have already been built—it is the very foundation on which everything is built, integrated from the very beginning. Barbara Carfagna, a journalist who has seen the new Karabakh with her own eyes, reports that the Azerbaijanis have used Israeli cybersecurity, Chinese sensors, and American communication platforms. And now they are ready to sell their “smart reconstruction model” to the next war-ravaged countries, such as Ukraine or Gaza. But here comes the twist that no one talks about: whoever controls the cybersecurity or sensor technology in these new territories can, with a single click, blow everything up again. It's the “red button” that no one sees, but that exists. It’s no longer just about who provides the money, but about who controls the data, AI, and digital security. Let's move on: prediction markets are platforms where people bet on whether a war will break out, whether a leader will be arrested, or whether a politician will use a certain word on live TV. Bets are placed using cryptocurrencies and programmable blockchains such as Ethereum. Those with insider information—intelligence agencies, journalists, insiders—can win huge sums by knowing in advance what will happen, or even by influencing the outcome itself. Sometimes, all it takes is for someone to make a phone call, or for a speech to be changed at the last second, to win a bet. All this is happening while the public narrative is lagging behind: newspapers still talk about wiretapping, but the real power lies in aggregating data from social media, webcams, prediction markets, and a thousand other sensors. Palantir, the leading U.S. data analytics company, is now the undisputed queen of this game, while everyone else is playing catch-up. Here is the missing perspective: while we think the game is between the great powers and their armies, the real war is between those who own, train, and sell the AI models that reshape and control territories. Dependence is no longer just on money or energy, but on software and algorithms that can be switched off or manipulated by those who designed them. At that point, the enemy is not only the one who destroyed you, but also the one who “rebuilt” you. There is one last question that few dare to ask: If the narrative we hear every day is already outdated, how vulnerable are we to “poisoned meatballs” – that is, to information designed to mislead us or shape our political and economic choices? And how much do prediction markets know before we do, given that the most popular bet on Polimarket today is whether Jesus will rise from the dead at Easter—while the platform's owner is the founder of Ethereum and Trump's son sits on the board? The future of security is no longer about reacting: it is about predicting, manipulating, aggregating, and betting. Today, power belongs to those who see things first and to those who can cut off the power whenever they want. Smart reconstruction is a new form of domination. If this idea has helped you see post-war reconstruction in a different light, you can click I'm In on Lara Notes: that's your way of saying that this perspective is now yours. And if, in a few days' time, you find yourself telling someone that today, the real lever of power in reconstructed territories is software, on Lara Notes, you can tag that conversation with Shared Offline—because certain ideas should be shared beyond the screen. This Note was created for the Festival del Sarà – Geopolitics and the Future and has saved you 15 minutes.