What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. Every modern war has been fought with the same playbook: tanks, jets, missiles, and soldiers.

But while nations spend trillions on aircraft carriers and fighter jets, the real war is already being fought with laptops and code.

Global cybercrime costs have exploded from $600 billion in 2017 to $10 trillion in 2025. Meanwhile, the United States allocates just about 3% of its defense budget to cybersecurity.

This isn't just a mismatch in priorities. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of where power now lives.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: How hacking became the dominant weapon of modern warfare

• 💪 The Power Move: What the shift to digital warfare means for the future of power and control

• 💵 Follow the Money: So, the Iraq War was a religious crusade for George W. Bush?

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

How Hacking Became the Future of War

The nature of war has fundamentally changed, but most people haven't noticed.

While nations continue building $100 million fighter jets and billion-dollar aircraft carriers, some of the most devastating attacks of the last decade were launched with nothing more than lines of code and Wi-fi.

This isn't theory. It's happening right now.

But to understand how we got here, you have to first look at what makes cyber warfare so fundamentally different from everything that came before:

1. The Economics of Digital Destruction

The first advantage is pure mathematics.

Traditional warfare is expensive. A single F-35 fighter jet costs $85 million, an aircraft carrier runs $13 billion, and training a pilot takes years and millions of dollars.

But cyber weapons operate on completely different economics:

• North Korea's cyber operations have brought in nearly $3 billion, providing a crucial funding stream for the regime’s nuclear program.

• Russia's NotPetya malware caused $10 billion in global damage despite being built at a fraction of its economic impact.

This economic asymmetry creates a fundamental advantage for attackers. Small nations can now project power far beyond their conventional military capabilities.

The math is simple: why spend $100 million on a missile that can destroy one target when you can spend $100,000 on malware that can destroy thousands of targets simultaneously?

But the economic advantage is only part of the story. The real game-changer is invisibility.

2. Why Hackers Always Stay Ahead, and Governments Stay Lost

What makes cyber warfare truly revolutionary isn't just its economics, it's its invisibility.

Conventional warfare leaves evidence: Missiles have serial numbers, tanks leave tracks, and soldiers can be captured.

But cyber attacks can be routed through dozens of countries, disguised as criminal activity, and executed through proxies that provide perfect deniability.

For example:

• When Estonia's entire digital infrastructure was paralyzed for three weeks in 2007, Russia simply denied involvement.

• When North Korea stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank, they operated through compromised computers worldwide.

• China systematically steals intellectual property worth hundreds of billions annually, often hiding behind the cover of state-sponsored hacking groups.

This attribution problem isn't a bug, it's a feature. Less than 1% of malicious cyber incidents result in any law enforcement action.

The result is a new form of warfare where aggressor nations can attack with minimal risk of retaliation. Meanwhile, their targets are left to absorb the damage and rebuild their defenses, often without any knowledge of who attacked.

And this combination of economic efficiency and operational invisibility has already transformed how modern conflicts are actually fought.

3. The Real Reason Hacking Will Break Civilization

The most dangerous aspect of this transformation is that cyber warfare doesn't just complement legacy systems, it's replacing them entirely:

• Russia's invasion of Ukraine began with cyberattacks on power grids, communications networks, and government systems.

• China's military doctrine heavily emphasizes cyber operations as a strategy for Taiwan to paralyze the island's defenses before any physical invasion.

• Iran uses cyber proxies to attack Israeli infrastructure, American hospitals, and European energy systems.

But the real target isn't military infrastructure. It's the everyday systems that keep modern life running:

→ The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack demonstrated how a single cyber incident could paralyze fuel supplies across the Eastern United States.
→ The attack on Ukraine's power grid showed how cyber weapons could leave hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in winter.
→ The WannaCry ransomware crippled hospitals across the UK, forcing them to cancel surgeries and turn away patients.

These incidents are proof of concept for a new form of warfare where civilian infrastructure becomes the primary battlefield.

And unlike conventional military targets, civilian infrastructure was never designed to withstand coordinated attack.

The terrifying reality is that every connected device and every app you use can be turned into a weapon. And most nations are completely unprepared for this reality.

But the scariest part is that this isn’t just about nation-states and defense. It’s about you and me.

Because the logic of cyberwar is the same logic that now defines global power.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

Why the Digital Revolution Changes Everything About Power

The shift to cyber warfare represents more than just new military tactics. It's a fundamental redistribution of global power.

For the first time in history, a small nation with skilled programmers can inflict more damage on a superpower than traditional military forces ever could.

This democratization of destructive capability means that power is no longer concentrated in the hands of nations with the largest militaries or biggest defense budgets.

It belongs to whoever can write the most effective code, find the most critical vulnerabilities, and execute attacks with the greatest precision.

But here's what most people miss: this same dynamic extends far beyond warfare.

The Takeaway:

So, the future belongs to those who understand that power now flows through networks, not hierarchies.

Whether you're building a business, advancing a career, or protecting your interests, it's more about how effectively you can navigate and influence digital systems than your physical force.

Because in a world where code is the new bullet, the most dangerous weapon isn't the one you can see coming.

It's the one that's already inside your system, waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - George W. Bush saw Iraq War as ‘crusade,’ declassified British reports say

#2 - Iran vows to continue enriching uranium: a ‘national pride‘

#3 - Transgender women banned from US Olympic competition

✨ Poll time!

📰 Keep Reading…