Welcome To The New Warring States

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In April, Donald Trump imposed sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners, expanding earlier pronouncements that targeted only major economies. For critics, it was a reckless act of economic warfare. For Trump and his allies, it was a long-overdue rejection of a naïve world order. In a striking historical parallel, in the Spring and Autumn period of ancient China, Duke Xiang of Song famously refused to attack an enemy before they had properly arrayed their troops, adhering to the codes of ritualized warfare. Predictably, he lost.

Today, a similar accusation is hurled at the United States: that it has restrained itself with outdated moral expectations, while rivals such as China and Russia maneuver freely, unburdened by idealism. Trumpism and the worldview of figures like J.D. Vance represent a sharp rejection of the so-called benevolence of Xiang. Their message is simple: America must adapt to a world where restraint is no longer a universal virtue.

This is not merely a moment of disruption. It marks a paradigmatic shift in global logic. The world is moving from a system of mediated stability toward one of open rivalry. To understand this moment, China’s own history offers a useful analogy. In the Spring and Autumn period (770 to 476 B.C.E.), warfare was ritualized, legitimacy symbolically upheld by the Zhou king. But as the old order weakened, the Warring States period (approximately 475 to 221 B.C.E.) emerged. It was a time of classic anarchy marked by intense competition, innovation, and systemic transformation. Legalism, meritocracy, military standardization and bureaucratic statecraft all took shape in this crucible. The end of ritual was also the beginning of modern governance.

Trump’s dramatic change to tariff policy signaled a clear turn to aggressive economic nationalism and demonstrates a worldview shaped by what I call “Warring States” logic. Trump’s trade policy bypasses multilateralism, instead compelling each country to negotiate bilaterally — on America’s terms. In doing so, Trump is not merely reacting to a broken global order. He is forcing others into an entirely new one.

This deeper shift reflects a redefinition of how power is structured and projected. It erodes the hub-and-spoke system centered on institutions like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO), replacing it with a peer-to-peer network of transactional relationships. In this emerging order, states act more like strategic actors in a fragmented landscape or rival feudal lords on a decentralized map of shifting power. Whether by design or instinct, this represents Trump’s Warring States-style realignment: direct, disruptive and structurally transformative.

Trumpism does not merely reject global liberalism; it reimagines the architecture of American power. Its core instinct is not isolationist or nihilistic, but fundamentally opposed to established diplomatic norms and rituals, a deliberate departure from the old ways of seeking consensus. In this worldview, legitimacy comes not from international approval but from output: industrial strength, cultural cohesion and strategic clarity. Rituals are not something to be respected, but to be bypassed.

This mindset did not emerge in a vacuum. For much of the postwar era, the U.S.-led international order resembled China’s Spring and Autumn period — a fragile yet enduring balance, upheld by norms, rituals and symbolic legitimacy. Henry Kissinger, the era’s foremost architect in foreign policy, believed in ambiguity, restraint and equilibrium. Institutions like the U.N. played the role of a Zhou king, lacking hard power but commanding deference. Even amid Cold War tension, the world remained rule-bound. Red lines held, backchannels worked, deterrence was mutual.

But the Zhou world is gone. Trumpism marks not an aberration but an inflection point, a recognition that fewer actors obey the old rites, and those who still do risk irrelevance. Like the Zhou order before it, today’s international system is fading not because of ideological rebellion but because its underlying conditions no longer hold. Perhaps from Trump’s perspective, tariff wars were a response to these changing conditions. Institutions like the WTO, he argued, no longer ensured reciprocity, and growing trade imbalances reflected how the liberal economic order had failed to protect national interests.

The transition from the Spring and Autumn period to the Warring States was far more than a change in political climate; it marked one of the most profound systemic shifts in Chinese history. Influential Marxist historian Guo Moruo characterized this era as involving a fundamental transformation that reshaped modes of production, social hierarchies and the very basis of legitimacy over centuries. It represented a deep pivot driven by new material and strategic realities — the spread of iron tools and weapons, mass-produced crossbows, horseback riding and large-scale irrigation — that rendered the old Zhou rituals obsolete. This historical lens suggests that today’s global shift is not merely about changing alliances or rhetoric, but about a deeper, structural and potentially epochal turn.

The Cold War is over. The Warring States have returned.

Who Is Qin?

Trump’s proposed purchase of Greenland, his threats to allies over defense spending and his unilateral withdrawals from major agreements are not anomalies. They reflect a worldview in which statecraft is no longer about upholding norms, but about renegotiating leverage. For Trump, NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Paris climate agreement are not binding commitments but simply contracts subject to exit or revision. His across-the-board tariffs from April follow the same playbook. Last week, after Beijing moved to tighten export controls on rare-earth magnets, Trump threatened tariffs of up to 100% on Chinese imports. Trump’s method is not Cold War diplomacy but rather the logic of a fragmented strategic landscape: confront strategic peers, coerce smaller players and reconfigure the playing field.

China and the United States are now essentially accusing each other of being Qin: the hard, efficient, norm-breaking state that conquered six kingdoms to unify China in 221 B.C.E. And perhaps both are right. Each is gravitating toward a model that prioritizes internal control, technological dominance and narrative power over international consensus. This convergence reflects how great powers make cost-benefit choices under strategic pressure, especially when they begin to think with a Warring States mentality — focusing on their own survival in a low-trust environment.

The United States, drawing on its scale and historic dominance, is acting more like Qin than it admits. It rewrites rules, rebuilds industrial capacity at home and hints at conditioning alliances on alignment and great burden-sharing. Under Trump, the coercive elements of American power, once veiled in diplomacy, are now laid openly on the table. China, with its centralized authority and long-term planning, reflects Qin’s strategic patience. It has expanded its naval power, extended its geoeconomic influence via the Belt and Road Initiative and developed new mechanisms of control, including export controls on strategic materials and cross-border law-enforcement measures affecting diaspora communities.

Smaller Qins are emerging, too. Russia, though weaker, has adopted a similar logic: at times retreating from multilateral commitments, seizing territory and acting unilaterally. Israel, facing what it calls existential threats, along with reduced external restraint, has leaned toward unilateral action in pursuit of strategic depth and deterrence. Both follow the logic of structural siege: act preemptively before geopolitical space narrows. These states are not anomalies. They are structural products of a world without a credible Zhou. The new Warring States system incentivizes Qin-like behavior: preempt, absorb or consolidate rivals, and act decisively.

With the decline of American-led multilateralism, the symbolic Zhou order is fading. The U.N., WTO and Bretton Woods institutions no longer hold the unifying sway they once did. What remains is not Cold War-style bipolarity, but a polycentric contest of rival Qins.

To extend the analogy, today’s major powers can be loosely compared to states from the Warring States era (Qin to the far west, Chu to the south, Qi on the eastern coast, Yan to the northeast, and the central-plains trio Han, Zhao, Wei), each with a distinct strategic profile.

Europe resembles the partitioned remnants of Jin, a once-powerful north-central state whose collapse and subsequent division into three weaker entities (Han, Zhao and Wei) is often taken to mark the start of the Warring States period. Japan, diminished in geopolitical clout but resilient in technological and commercial infrastructure, plays a role akin to Qi, a wealthy coastal power in the east: militarily constrained yet indispensable for its salt, iron and trade.

The Islamic world mirrors the southern state of Chu: a sprawling, diverse civilization that was once seen by northern powers as culturally alien or inferior and labeled the “southern barbarian.” Yet it wielded immense cultural vitality, military strength and strategic depth. Likewise, today, Islamic countries remain underestimated by the major powers, but their demographic weight, ideological intensity and geographic centrality make them a latent force in shaping the global order. Other strategically pivotal actors, such as India, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Vietnam, resemble Yan: peripheral yet adaptable, and often playing outsized roles in shaping balance at critical junctures.

Contemporary populist strategists echo elements of Shang Yang, the radical Qin reformer who championed centralization and legalist discipline. Trump, in this analogy, resembles Lü Buwei — the ambitious merchant who rose not through aristocratic lineage but through bold maneuvering, opportunism and a shrewd grasp of leverage. Lü brought a trader’s instincts into a warrior bureaucracy, much as Trump injected transactional thinking into the strategic imagination of American statecraft. Both were disruptive, theatrical and instrumental in reshaping their respective systems, pursuing rule-rewriting to lock in future advantage.

In this light, the “Make America Great Again” movement is less a conservative restoration than a strategic recalibration rooted in the logic of the Warring States. It tends to favor unilateralism over consensus, conditional alliances over norms and the pursuit of dominance over the maintenance of the international order.

Shifting Powers, New Rules

The Warring States period was a quintessential case of international anarchy. With no overarching authority, each state acted according to its own survival calculus, much like today’s global order. Traditional balance-of-power theory suggests that weaker states will band together to check the rise of a hegemon. But history tells a more sobering story. The Qin did not rise because balance worked; it rose because it learned how to break nearly every alliance in its way. This historical irony has long haunted strategists. Political scientists like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Joseph Nye each offered different answers to the problem of order without empire. But as multilateralism falters, their assumptions are under renewed strain.

Kissinger’s approach to diplomacy centered on maintaining global stability by balancing great-power relationships and avoiding open conflict. Rooted in realist thought, it emphasized equilibrium, restraint and the ritualized management of rivalry. In this sense, his worldview echoed elements of the Spring and Autumn periods in ancient China, when states adhered to formal hierarchies and codes of conduct to preserve a fragile peace amid recurrent armed clashes.

But in today’s emerging Warring States-like environment, with multilateral institutions weakening and great-power competition increasingly zero-sum, Kissinger’s framework may no longer be sufficient. The speed, intensity and asymmetry of modern rivalries demand more adaptive strategies. Brzezinski’s Cold War vision similarly relied on durable alliances to balance against adversaries like the Soviet Union. Yet in today’s world of fragmented power and shifting loyalties, alliances are proving more fragile.

As in the Warring States period, where diplomacy was often undercut by betrayal and realignment, collective security strategies are increasingly undermined by diverging national interests and strategic mistrust. The Hezong (“vertical alliance”) was a coalition of Qin’s rivals — principally Qi, Chu, Zhao and Wei — championed by the strategist Su Qin (no connection to the Qin state). Although Su Qin initially persuaded these states to unite against the Qin state, the alliance soon unraveled under pressure, as the state of Qin exploited internal divisions and picked off members one by one. The same logic plays out today, where coalition-building can struggle to withstand the strain of asymmetric interests and coercive leverage that is wielded by dominant powers. For example, within the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (comprised of the United States, Japan, India and Australia), India’s posture toward Russia has at times diverged from that of its partners, testing the cohesion of the coalition.

The theory of complex interdependence, developed by political scientists Robert Keohane and Nye, posited that dense economic and institutional ties among states could diminish the utility of military force and make cooperation a more rational path to mutual gain. Nye later expanded this logic into his influential theory of “soft power,” emphasizing the ability to shape global outcomes through appeal and emulation grounded in culture, values and institutional legitimacy rather than coercion. These frameworks flourished during the high tide of globalization, when multilateralism and integration seemed to promise a more stable world order.

Today, however, those ideals are fraying. In a world increasingly marked by zero-sum rivalries, technological decoupling and hardened geopolitical lines, soft power alone is no longer sufficient. Even the United States, though still the leading exporter of soft power, has retreated from its interdependence agenda, dismantling the U.S.Agency for International Development (USAID) and shifting toward industrial policy, techno-nationalism, and hard-power deterrence. What was once a contest of influence is becoming a competition of capacity.

In contrast to Kissinger, Brzezinski and Nye, political scientist John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism offers a starker lens through which to view today’s global dynamics. Mearsheimer argues that international politics is fundamentally zero-sum without a central authority, with great powers compelled to maximize their relative strength in order to survive and deter challengers. His framework calls for assertive strategies, a focus on hard power and a readiness to override existing norms when strategic advantage is at stake. In today’s unraveling international system, Mearsheimer’s vision appears increasingly prescient. Success depends less on restraint and more on agility, coercive capacity and the ability to project credible power.

This dynamic closely resembles the late Warring States period of ancient China. Although the Qin was widely recognized as the greatest threat, rival states failed to sustain collective resistance. Instead, they remained locked in short-term struggles, seizing cities from one another, shifting alliances opportunistically and undermining regional balance. In Mearsheimer’s framework, this behavior is not irrational but structural. In an anarchic order, even existential threats rarely override the drive for relative gains. Cooperation breaks down not because of a lack of foresight, but because trust cannot be enforced.

While neorealism explains the inevitability of great power rivalry, neoclassical realism helps us understand why systemic stress often leads not only to external conflict but also to internal experimentation. When institutional adaptation proves insufficient, states begin to turn to new ideas, redefining not just their policies but the very logic of governance. The Warring States period exemplifies this dynamic: it produced a fierce competition of ideologies such as Confucianism, Legalism and Mohism, each of which advanced a distinct incentive structure for political behavior. Rather than a static multipolar balance, the system resembled a multi-agent reinforcement learning environment in which states, operating under partial information, continuously adjusted their institutional strategies in response to both systemic pressures and the evolving moves of their peers. The result was not equilibrium but a turbulent ecology of adaptive innovation.

Through strategic deception, institutional coherence and a superior legal-bureaucratic framework, Qin systematically dismantled multilateral coalitions and neutralized each counterweight in its path. Its decisive edge lay not merely in military might, but in the Legalist system that enabled rule-based governance, standardized administration, consistent rewards for performance as well as harsh punishments for rule violation. This internal coherence allowed Qin to align incentives, scale innovations and integrate logistics at a level unmatched by its rivals. In a fractured and competitive system, such adaptability can overpower even the most coordinated balancing efforts, suggesting that long-term stability hinges not just on power distribution but on institutional innovation.

A similar dynamic may be unfolding in today’s fractured world. Rather than settling into stable multipolarity, the global system may tilt toward whichever model proves most adaptive and exportable. Just as the Qin model outlasted the dynasty that created it and shaped Chinese governance for two millennia, the dominant political framework of this era may survive well beyond the state or regime that first established it. In an age where distance no longer restrains influence and alliances are fragile, it is institutional design, not raw strength, that may determine the next global order.

The Return Of The Unrestrained State

One of the most widely accepted theories in postwar international relations has been the Democratic Peace Theory, which holds that democracies almost never war with one another. Some may argue that democratic institutions temper aggressive statecraft, holding leaders accountable and encouraging restraint, but in a Warring States world, strategic imperatives can override internal constraints.

In moments of heightened geopolitical competition, democratic institutions may still produce leaders who act unilaterally or coercively. The United States, for example, has shown renewed interest in direct asset acquisition and strategic control. Under Trump, the United States floated the idea of purchasing Greenland, questioned the neutrality of the Panama Canal and proposed reshaping alliances based on transactional compliance. These were not mere diplomatic eccentricities. They reflected a broader shift toward a hard-power mindset, even within a democracy.

In such an environment, the incentives for maximizing power begin to outweigh ideological constraints. The line between democracy and autocracy becomes less about internal governance and more about how a state pursues power abroad, as even democratic leaders, operating in an anarchic international system, may act unilaterally when opportunities arise. A Qin-like state is not distinguished by how it votes, but by how it competes — through coercion, innovation and the erosion of norms to secure advantage.

This points to a deeper structural argument. In an anarchic international system without a credible hegemon, all states, regardless of their regime type, may be drawn toward a realpolitik approach. Democracy may provide resilience and legitimacy at home, but it no longer guarantees moderation abroad. If the strategic environment rewards offensive action, even democracies will adapt.

In the end, democratic peace may have been a luxury of the Spring and Autumn era, the period preceding the Warring States, sustained less by the absence of war than by relative stability and shared norms. In a Warring States world, survival depends less on internal values than on external capabilities.

This shift has resurrected the centrality of the state. For decades after the Cold War, many believed that globalization and transnational institutions would dilute sovereignty. The political commentator Thomas Friedman declared the world “flat.” British political economist Susan Strange warned about the retreat of the state. But in today’s Warring States environment, the state is not fading. It is returning with force.

One of the clearest signs of this return is in the realm of technological sovereignty. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing and biotech are no longer seen as commercial frontiers alone. They are treated as instruments of national power. The United States’ CHIPS and Science Act and China’s Made in China 2025 plan exemplify this race for tech dominance. The ability to control data, compute and algorithms is increasingly analogous to the control of oil in the 20th century and of iron during the Warring States period. AI governance, once thought to be the domain of open collaboration, is now framed as a race among rival powers.

States are also reclaiming control over strategic supply chains. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and rising tensions over Taiwan have exposed the fragility of economic interdependence. As a result, industrial policy has returned. Washington is subsidizing semiconductor manufacturing; Beijing is accelerating the development of its domestic tech stack. In an era when de-risking (and, in some quarters, decoupling) is no longer taboo, supply chains are no longer viewed as neutral pathways but as instruments of influence and resilience.

At the same time, the boundary between public and private power is shifting. Tech giants once saw themselves as stateless actors. Today, their infrastructures are increasingly regarded as national security assets. In the United States, firms like OpenAI and Nvidia are closely aligned with government strategy. This alignment became explicit when Washington converted previously committed CHIPS support into a 9.9% equity stake in Intel, making the government a significant shareholder. In China, companies such as Huawei and ByteDance operate under the scrutiny of the party-state. Both the U.S. and Chinese governments are now deeply involved in the proposed sale of TikTok. Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations face growing constraints, including reduced funding, such as through the dismantling of USAID and increased scrutiny in countries like India, diminishing their global influence. This growing convergence between national policy and corporate capability suggests that the real unit of competition is no longer the company but the state.

In short, the world is not just becoming more fragmented. It is becoming more state-centric. Governance models, innovation capacity and strategic autonomy are no longer abstract policy goals. They have become conditions for survival. The return of the state does not signal a return to the past. It reflects a shift toward a new strategic landscape, where adaptability is the ultimate currency of power.

Survival Through Innovation

In the Warring States period, dominance came less from charisma than from scalable capacity: ironworking that enabled mass weapon production, discipline in drilled armies and institutional reform — including standardized laws and measures, county administration and merit-based ranks. These turned resources into deployable power, enabling rapid mobilization and battlefield wins. In the future, it may come from AI, not merely as a weapon but as an integrated system of perception, decision-making and governance.

If one nation builds an AI architecture a generation ahead of others, the resulting asymmetry could resemble the technological gap of the first Gulf War, when in 1991 U.S.-led forces used precision-guided munitions and satellite coordination to decisively overwhelm Iraqi defenses. But today’s stakes are far greater. The winner of the AI race could shape conflicts or entire systems of influence before others even grasp what is unfolding.

In the classical Warring States era, Qin unified China through force and reform. In the AI-driven world to come, dominance may not depend on territory, but on embedding systems and setting the standards that others must follow. Technology has redefined the physics of power. Distance no longer constrains influence. Data, infrastructure, finance and ideology now project power globally, at low cost and without physical presence.

Unlike physical empires, AI can cross borders invisibly. A sufficiently advanced governance system that combines language models, surveillance, predictive analytics and logistical control can dominate not through war but by embedding itself into the critical systems of other states. This is already taking shape, with examples including China’s LOGINK port-logistics platform, which aggregates port-call, vessel-movement, and cargo-flow data across participating hubs and has drawn U.S. government bans and warnings about data and operational dependencies, as well as the U.K.’s award of the National Health Service England Federated Data Platform to U.S. firm Palantir and its partners, controversial amid privacy concerns and the company’s long-standing U.S. defense and intelligence ties.

In such a world, the leading AI model may not need to fire a shot. It could preempt deterrence, distort communications and shape outcomes faster than human systems can respond. Retaliation becomes irrelevant if threats are neutralized before they are understood. What follows may not be a Pax Americana or Pax Sinica but a Pax Algorithmica. A world coordinated through a dominant AI system. States may retain flags and parliaments, but sovereignty may become symbolic.

That cooperative equilibrium, like the Zhou order before the Warring States, has begun to unravel. As technological stakes rise and AI becomes the new frontier, the contest is no longer about shaping shared standards but about securing unilateral advantage. What comes next resembles not protocol-driven consensus, but the logic of strategic rupture.

The first half of the contemporary technological revolution was defined by the internet and mobile connectivity, systems based on protocols that supported globalization and multinational organizations. This era was characterized by cooperation and interconnectedness, similar to the Spring and Autumn period in ancient China, where rival powers competed within a shared framework of legitimacy and norms. In telecom, major powers like China, the United States, Europe and Japan competed fiercely over standards and patents but did so within a framework of shared rules and procedural legitimacy. Influence was earned through participation, negotiation and adherence to common protocols. Legitimacy mattered, processes were followed and dominance came through consensus and protocol, not disruption. However, that equilibrium has now collapsed.

We are now entering the second half of this technological revolution: the era of artificial intelligence. This stage is characterized by intensified competition and ruthless rivalry. The AI race, particularly among large language models, is fragmented, unsanctioned and accelerating, resembling the Warring States period at its most elemental. States and firms no longer wait for agreement. They iterate, deploy and redefine the rules as they go. The race for AI supremacy will dominate future global power struggles, with AI emerging as the modern “iron,” just as it propelled Qin to power during the Warring States period. The nation that can out-innovate its rivals may rise to global preeminence.

In today’s global AI race, victory will not go to the nation with the most wealth or the largest chip reserves. It will go to the one with the most adaptive system — politically, institutionally and cognitively. Like the AI models they seek to build, states must be able to learn, iterate and self-correct. Political rigidity stifles innovation; responsiveness accelerates it. The countries that foster the best environments for experimentation, scientific discovery and continuous improvement will define the technological frontier.

The Warring States era serves as an apt analogy for what lies ahead, where different governance models must compete openly, just like competing AI models. Each of the seven major states ran its own political experiment, creating a vibrant laboratory of governance. Some focused on legal and bureaucratic reform: Qin implemented a rigid legalist order under its influential minister Shang Yang; Wei produced an early systematic legal code under the statesman Li Kui; and Han honed its statecraft using bureaucratic techniques developed by Chancellor Shen Buhai.

Others prioritized military innovation. The southern state of Chu experimented with military egalitarianism under the general Wu Qi, while Zhao’s King Wuling radically transformed his army by adopting the superior cavalry tactics of his nomadic neighbors. Still others focused on different strengths: Yan relied on the coalition diplomacy of its general Yue Yi, while the wealthy coastal state of Qi fostered intellectual pluralism by hosting thinkers of diverse schools at its famous Jixia Academy. Together, they formed the most concentrated political laboratory in ancient history.

Today, the contest has returned. States are competing to define the architecture of the future. For years, global discourse revolved around the Washington Consensus and the China model. Now, what prevails may not be the most admired but the most functional. And when one system pulls decisively ahead, others may not resist. They may convert. This was the logic behind Qin’s triumph. Its model outperformed the rest not because it was loved, but because it worked.

The most effective political systems in this new Warring States era may resemble AI models: adaptive, iterative and responsive to feedback. China once thrived on this flexibility during the Deng era of the late 1970s through the 1990s, when the country opened up its economy and encouraged experimentation, but now it struggles to balance centralization with innovation. The United States, long admired for institutional reinvention, now faces mounting internal gridlock, casting doubt on its capacity for renewal. In the long run, it is not ideology or force that will define the global order, but which model proves most adaptable. And in that race, history offers no guarantees.

The Most Luminous Of All Times

But adaptability alone cannot be the final measure of success. Even in a Warring States world, humans still yearn for what is just. Ancient thinkers like the Chinese philosopher Mencius believed that yi, or righteousness, was not merely a social construct but an intrinsic part of human nature.

Even amid ruthless competition, people retain what Mencius called a heart that cannot bear the suffering of others, which he identified as the “sprout of benevolence.” This is not a sign of weakness, but the foundation of righteous politics. Justice is not the opposite of effectiveness. It is what allows systems to endure beyond victory. History does not only reward the strong, but also those who can turn power into legitimacy. Strategic necessity may override sentiment, but it does not erase conscience. The next global order will not only need to function; it must also be fair.

In ancient China, the chaos of the Warring States period gave rise not only to dominant powers but to a new political class: the shi, wandering scholars, strategists and reformers who transcended their birth and borders to shape visions of governance, ethics and legitimacy. Rulers competed to attract these minds, and the era became the most fertile intellectual laboratory in Chinese history. Figures like political strategists Zhang Yi, Fan Ju, and the Legalist reformer Shang Yang, moved across rival courts and rose to Qin’s chancellorship, offering not just tactics but also new theories of rule. It was an age when ideas operated as instruments of power: alliance schemes, codified legal and administrative reforms and new military doctrines were proposed by itinerant thinkers and then quickly implemented, often determining war or survival.

Today’s fractured world may catalyze a similar emergence. As institutions erode and traditional elites falter, a new global shi class may rise, not bound by noble lineage or national borders, but drawn from technologists, policy thinkers, builders and founders who shape systems across sectors and geographies.

Yet the parallels are not perfect. Whereas ancient thinkers could traverse states freely, today’s world is defined by visa restrictions, classified research, ideological suspicion and growing techno-nationalism. Even as digital tools connect more people than ever, knowledge is increasingly fenced off by states — for example, U.S.–China scientific collaboration has declined since the pandemic amid tighter national-security controls, even as collaboration remains high in some other regions and fields.

The new shi will need more than brilliance. They must navigate ideological, institutional and computational systems to have political impact. These individuals may not cross borders to become prime ministers, as their Warring States predecessors did, but their ideas may travel through algorithms, protocols and networks to shape how societies govern and adapt. As these new shi shape ideas that travel beyond borders, their legacies may not be in their titles or offices, but in the systems they help design.

In the long run, the most hopeful outcome of this Warring States era may not be a new hegemon but a new kind of order, without kings and without emperors. Power may no longer lie in conquest but in coherence. Not in dominance but in design. Just as the last Axial Age gave us philosophies of virtue and justice, perhaps this one will yield protocols of resilience and coordination. The architecture of tomorrow may look less like an empire and more like a Transformer model, an AI architecture built on attention, alignment and self-organization. Perhaps a Web 4.0 — a speculative symbiotic web in which humans and AI co-evolve — will not merely replace platforms but reimagine politics itself.

This may sound distant or utopian, especially in a moment often defined by fatigue. In China, a saying has gained popularity: “This year will be the best of the next 10.” It reflects not hope, but exhaustion, a sense of decline and foreboding. But perhaps the diagnosis is premature. What we are entering may not be a collapse, but a modeling epoch: a new Warring States world, chaotic and cruel, but also luminous. For those who think in systems and build in code, this is not the end of history. It is its recommencement.

The Warring States era was not only an age of war. It was an age of brilliance. During the political upheaval of that period, Chinese civilization produced some of its greatest minds: Mencius, Zhuangzi, Han Feizi, and Mozi, whose frameworks still shape political and moral reasoning today. Philosopher Karl Jaspers called this broader phenomenon the Axial Age, when societies across China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece simultaneously reinvented what it meant to be human. Philosophy, justice and law did not arise from peace, but from rupture.

More than two millennia after Jaspers’ Axial Age, we may be entering another globally synchronized rethink. With no shared ideology and dwindling trust in inherited institutions, humanity is being forced back to first principles. What is justice? What deserves to endure? Questions of AI ethics, political legitimacy and governance are no longer academic. They are civilizational. The true contest ahead is between systems that adapt and systems that ossify. The ruthless may win battles, but the adaptable win eras and the just endure. This is not a dark age. It is a time worthy of living.

Editor’s Note: Noema is transparent about the use of AI in any of its pieces. We publish original human-generated ideas but allow authorized, disclosed use of AI in certain cases. The initial submitted draft of this piece utilized ChatGPT as an editorial assistant and translator to help convey Chinese concepts more clearly in English, so as to express the author’s original, human-generated ideas more effectively.

Specifically, it was used to generate section headings, suggest transitions and reduce repetition, as well as for line edits to improve clarity and flow in the initial draft. It was not used to originate facts; all claims and examples are drawn from the author’s own notes and publicly available sources, and were reviewed and edited by the author himself first. This draft has since received multiple human edits. Noema verified the author’s identity and the piece’s conceptual originality using various scanners and review processes and conducted a detailed human fact-check. See our AI policy here.