War in the contemporary period has moved far beyond territorial conquest into the realm of systemic disruption. Its most consequential effects now unfold across energy systems, shipping routes, industrial inputs, and digital infrastructure. A strike on a gas facility in West Asia can ripple through semiconductor fabrication in East Asia, delay data centre expansion in India, and raise electricity costs across continents within weeks. This transformation reflects the deep integration of the global economy. According to the World Bank, more than 80% of global trade by volume depends on maritime supply chains. When these routes are destabilised — through direct attacks, chokepoint vulnerabilities, or surging insurance premiums — the consequences cascade rapidly across industries.
Asymmetric warfare and the economics of imbalance
At the core of this shift lies a new form of asymmetric warfare defined not merely by unequal military strength, but by unequal economic structures. Cheap weapons force expensive responses, and that arithmetic is now reshaping the strategic calculus of states. Iranian-origin Shahed drones cost between $20,000 and $50,000 per unit, while interceptor missiles such as the Patriot cost between $3 million and $4 million per launch — a cost-exchange ratio exceeding 100:1. First-person-view drones assembled for under $500 have destroyed armoured systems worth millions. In January 2026, Ukraine’s defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov reported that drone operators had killed or seriously wounded more than 240,000 Russian soldiers in a single year, pointing out how attritable systems have become the dominant instrument of industrialised warfare.
A weaker actor does not need to defeat a stronger adversary militarily. It only needs to force it into economically unsustainable defensive patterns. As analysts observed of the 2026 Red Sea engagements, every time a $2 million interceptor destroys a $20,000 drone, the defending power’s strategic influence contracts. Victory is no longer secured through decisive battles but through the gradual exhaustion of resources — a logic of attrition that penalises technological sophistication itself. The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, budgeted at roughly $7.5 billion for counter-drone systems in 2026, is an early acknowledgement that even the world’s most-funded military cannot sustain the old cost curve indefinitely. This further unveils a new dynamics where geopolitics (control over Hornuz) is used as a successful deterrent to nukes.
Energy chokepoints and the fragility of gas supply
Energy infrastructure represents one of the most critical nodes in this expanded battlefield. Qatar accounts for roughly 20% of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade, with production concentrated in the Ras Laffan Industrial City — a structural vulnerability in which disruption at a single site can destabilise global markets. Following recent strikes, LNG spot prices in Europe and Asia rose by approximately 35%, triggering spiraling effects across energy-dependent sectors. Nearly one-fifth of global LNG flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint now fully exposed to the dynamics of the conflict. Insurance premiums for vessels operating in affected regions have historically increased by 200–300% during periods of escalation, while rerouting adds both time and cost to an already strained system.
Energy disruption is not simply a supply issue. Rising gas prices feed directly into electricity costs, which in turn affect industrial production, fertiliser output, and digital infrastructure. The IMF has warned that supply chain disruptions of this scale can raise global shipping costs by 15–25% within weeks. What begins as a targeted strike on a processing facility becomes a systemic shock propagating across continents.
Helium, the hidden casualty of conflict
If LNG represents the visible layer of disruption, helium represents the hidden one. Essential for semiconductor manufacturing, medical imaging, and aerospace technologies, helium is both irreplaceable and dangerously concentrated in production. Qatar produced approximately 63 million cubic metres of helium in 2025 — roughly one-third of the 190 million cubic metres generated globally, according to the US Geological Survey. When QatarEnergy halted LNG production on 2 March 2026 following a force majeure declaration, helium supply automatically ceased — not because of helium market conditions, but because it is extracted solely as a byproduct of LNG processing.
The resulting shock removed nearly a third of global helium supply from the market. Spot prices doubled since the crisis began, with Fitch Ratings warning that severe shortage scenarios could drive them 50–200% higher still. Semiconductor manufacturers — which typically maintain only two to three months of reserves — are particularly exposed. Helium performs at least four irreplaceable functions in chip fabrication, from lithography cooling to ion implantation, and no viable substitutes exist). The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s Chip on Wafer on Substrate packaging capacity, critical for Nvidia’s Blackwell AI accelerators, was already fully sold out through mid-2026 before this crisis began; the helium crunch compounds a constraint that was already ineluctable. Reuters reported that South Korean chipmakers’ helium stocks were projected to last only until June 2026, concentrating minds on the timeline in ways that abstract supply-chain warnings never could.
This dynamic illustrates the logic of asymmetric warfare in its most oblique form: a relatively inexpensive disruption to gas infrastructure propagates through industrial systems, ultimately constraining the highest-value sectors of the global economy. China, which imports roughly 85% of its helium split between Russia and Qatar, is now facing significant shortages in its high-tech sector, and has announced plans to add 250 million standard cubic feet of domestic capacity from May 2026 — though that capacity will take time to come online, and the interim damage will be irreversible for production schedules already slipped.
Artificial Intelligence and the material limits of digital power
Artificial intelligence is often imagined as an abstract, software-driven domain. In reality, it depends on a dense physical infrastructure of semiconductors, data centres, and energy systems — all of which are now under strain simultaneously. Data centres currently consume around 1–1.5% of global electricity, a share set to rise sharply with AI expansion. Recent LNG price spikes have raised estimated data centre operating costs by 10–20%, eroding the economics of expansion plans already committed to in capital budgets.
The parallel pressure on aluminium — a key material in server chassis and heat exchangers, with West Asian producers supplying roughly 22% of global output outside China — adds yet another layer of vulnerability. Emerging reports suggest that data centres themselves are becoming deliberate targets in conflict zones, reflecting a broader strategic focus on ‘soft’ infrastructure as a theatre of war. Taken together, these pressures place an estimated $635 billion in global Big Tech capital expenditure at direct risk. The conflicts of 2026 are, among other things, a stress test of the physical substrate on which the digital economy runs.
India’s data ambitions in an unstable world
India’s rapid expansion in digital infrastructure is deeply entrenched in these global systems. The country relies almost entirely on imported helium, making it acutely vulnerable to supply disruptions. Its data centre market, valued at $10.8 billion in 2026 and projected to reach $36.6 billion by 2035, is already experiencing delays of three to six months, with AdaniConneX and Reliance Jio among the affected operators. Around 60–80% of data centre power in India derives from coal-based grids, adding fuel price volatility and environmental constraints to an already fraught picture.
India’s semiconductor ambitions compound the exposure. The Tata–PSMC fabrication facility in Dholera — a ₹91,526 crore investment targeting 50,000 wafer starts per month — was already facing reported delays before the helium crisis. The disruption to global helium supply now introduces a structural headwind for any commissioning timeline, given that the gas is non-negotiable in wafer fabrication. Micron’s Gujarat assembly and test facility, targeting 14 million units per week, faces analogous supply-chain exposure.
Yet the crisis also creates openings. As disruptions affect data centres in the United States and Europe, cloud traffic may be rerouted to relatively stable regions. India attracted roughly $14.7 billion in data centre investment between 2020 and April 2025, with foreign institutional investors contributing about 86% of the total. If India can strengthen infrastructure resilience and accelerate renewable-powered capacity, it could position itself as an alternative hub in a system undergoing fragmentation — turning geopolitical turbulence into strategic advantage.
From Ukraine to West Asia: A qualitative shift
The current disruptions echo, but substantially extend, the supply shocks triggered by the Russia–Ukraine war. That conflict primarily affected oil, gas, and grain markets. The present escalation penetrates deeper — into helium, semiconductor supply chains, and the physical infrastructure of artificial intelligence itself. This marks a qualitative shift: war is no longer confined to energy security but now encompasses the material foundations of technological production, making its economic impact broader, more complex, and potentially more obdurate in character.
Governments are beginning to respond to this reality. The United States and Algeria are expanding helium production, and China has announced emergency domestic capacity additions. Rebuilding critical infrastructure such as Ras Laffan could take three to five years. Resilience — once dismissed as an inefficiency — is becoming as strategically important as efficiency in economic planning. The search for redundancy in supply chains, once a niche concern of procurement managers, has become a matter of national security.
Strategy in an age of systemic war
The emerging logic of war is defined by cost asymmetry and systemic vulnerability. Cheap weapons impose expensive responses, while targeted disruptions cascade across the interconnected tissue of the global economy with a portentous speed that policy has not yet learned to match. For India, the challenge is not simply to expand infrastructure, but to make it resilient — through supply chain diversification, energy security investment, and strategic planning attuned to geopolitical risk.
In the new arithmetic of war, power is measured not only in military capability, but in the ability to sustain systems, absorb shocks, and adapt to disruption. Nations that conflate technological sophistication with strategic durability may find themselves on the wrong side of a cost-exchange ratio they never anticipated. That calculus is now ineluctable.