The Illusion of the Intangible
For years, artificial intelligence has been presented as something almost ethereal. Algorithms, data, models, neural networks. A whole language that suggested abstraction, even neutrality. As if power had finally abandoned matter to settle in the clean realm of ideas. It was a comforting illusion.
However, artificial intelligence is not intangible anymore. On the contrary, it is becoming (or has effectively become) one of the most material forms of power ever known.
Rare earths to manufacture components. Massive energy to feed data centers. Advanced chips that require extremely sophisticated machinery. Physical infrastructures that do not allow improvisation. All of this is tangible—very tangible. In short, artificial intelligence is no longer sustained by ideas, but by material resources, tangible and extremely scarce.
As a consequence, the world is no longer organized around principles or ideologies, but around positions. In this sense, China dominates rare earth processing, while the United States controls the design and production of advanced chips. Europe, meanwhile (in a dreamlike state and in perpetual drowsiness), attempts to regulate what it does not produce.
The War That Is Not Named
The wars of our century do not always smell of gunpowder. Sometimes, the battlefield is a carpeted office where export restrictions are signed and selective sanctions are calibrated. These are decisions that rarely make headlines, yet they carry a silent gravity: they determine which nations will build the future of artificial intelligence and which will be relegated to merely inhabiting it.
On this geopolitical chessboard, figures such as Donald Trump cease to be anomalies of the system and reveal themselves as its most logical consequence. We are not witnessing chaos for the sake of chaos, nor unpredictable leaders driven by impulse. We are facing actors who, earlier than the rest, have understood the visceral and material nature of this conflict. They have grasped that behind algorithms there is silicon, cables, and sovereign control.
We may question their manners, often coarse and lacking diplomatic polish. We may challenge their methods for being frontal, abrupt, and destructive. However, an uncomfortable truth is beginning to emerge from the noise: their diagnosis is far from naive. While others are still debating the aesthetics of the board, they are already moving the pieces.
And in geopolitics, naivety tends to be expensive.
The wars of the past were declared. Today’s wars are administered.
The Hunger of the Digital Gods
We tend to imagine artificial intelligence as something ethereal, an immaterial presence floating in “the cloud.” But reality is far more physical, more voracious, and more violent: algorithms do not feed on code; they feed on fire.
Behind every line of output and every generative process lies massive electrical consumption. AI not only needs silicon; it requires an uninterrupted torrent of energy that is reshaping the map of the world.
This is where the ghosts of classical geopolitics return to reclaim their throne. Conflicts in the Middle East, tensions in strategic straits, and control of maritime routes are no longer echoes of the 20th century. They are the life support system of digital infrastructure. What we once considered “old” is now the backbone of the most advanced technologies.
The equation of power in our era has become as simple as it is relentless:
Energy control. No longer merely an economic metric; it is the right to exist at the frontier. Without watts, the most powerful processor is just a stone of silicon.
Algorithmic dominance. Whoever holds the key to energy holds the privilege of bringing intelligence to life.
The architecture of reality. Whoever controls intelligence ceases to be a spectator and becomes the scriptwriter of the world.
In the end, history has not changed that much. We once fought for coal to power machines; today we fight for light so that machines can think for us. Whoever controls supply organizes truth.
Europe’s Nostalgia
Europe has chosen to take refuge in the art of writing laws, its oldest talent. While the rest of the world melts silicon and raises data centers like cathedrals, Brussels drafts parchments, regulates privacy as if fencing the ocean, organizes data, and classifies risks—constructing a narrative of authority it does not possess, yet one that allows it to look in the mirror and still feel relevant.
However, setting the rules is not the same as building the engine, and this is a truth bureaucracy cannot conceal. Europe attempts to govern the consequences of a system it does not understand at its origin. It has become that solitary referee running across the field blowing the whistle, while the players—who are not its own—have decided to ignore it and play by their own rules.
Amid this board, Spain inhabits a comfortable margin, almost idyllic. It is that periphery where the sun shines but the gears do not turn. It does not produce the technology that burns the air, it does not control the resources that move digital armies, nor does it define the standards the world will follow tomorrow. Its role is purely adaptive, a chameleon trying to mimic the color of progress.
Yet the official discourse prefers epic narratives. There is talk of “leadership” and “strategic positioning” with the enthusiasm of someone who believes they are conducting the orchestra simply because they clap in time with the music. Spain participates in the conversation, yes. But when the moment comes to make the decisions that will alter the course of history, no one waits for Spain to raise its hand.
For decades, we rocked ourselves in the cradle of a gentle naivety. We believed trade was the antidote to war, that interdependence would make us untouchable, and that knowledge, by its very nature, would be a shared good.
Artificial Intelligence has been the alarm clock that shattered that illusion.
What lies before us is not a “technological revolution” to improve citizens’ lives. It is a brutal reorganization of power. It has revealed that knowledge is protected by concrete walls, that technology is the new naval blockade, and that access to resources is the most lethal weapon of our time.
Epilogue: The Invisible Filter
Europe continues to speak the language of treaties in a world that has returned to the language of force. Not a brute force of trenches and mud, but a surgical force: that of deciding who has access to supply and who is left in the dark.
In this new order, artificial intelligence is not a promise of universal progress. It is a filter. And like any filter, its function is not only to let the best pass through, but to decide what must be left out.
The real tragedy is not that Europe is losing control of the situation. The tragedy is the silence of those who have not even realized that, long ago, the key to the room changed hands.