The oceans are the invisible infrastructure of modern civilisation—the global operating system upon which trade, energy, data, and climate stability depend. More than 80 percent of world commerce moves by sea, and over 95 percent of international internet traffic flows through undersea cables. Yet the maritime domain remains fundamentally anarchic: beyond the domestic seas, it is a space where states, corporations, and non-state actors contest resources, assert coercive power, or exploit regulatory gaps.

Many conversations today frame AI + cyber as a looming arms race—faster attackers, smarter malware, more breaches. But what if the real opportunity is to make the cybersecurity aftermarket obsolete by addressing its root cause: insecure, defect-ridden software? For nearly 40 years, the world has been patching the same types of software flaws that caused the first Internet crash in 1988. The truth is: We don’t have a cybersecurity problem. We have a software quality problem. That can finally change.

The preliminary lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war are not new; at their core these lessons have been described by military strategists throughout history. They are, however, an uncomfortable reminder that warfare is complicated and inherently complex, and combinations of, for example, human behaviour and fast innovation contribute to fast adaptive cycles and, arguably, increased unpredictability.