According to a fundamental theory of physics, the theory of information, noise becomes information when it makes sense in a frame of reference. When it doesn’t make sense, it interferes with the circulation of information, and can destroy the frame of reference, the system, in which it circulates, by creating chaos. Under certain conditions, which theory studies, noise can, after destroying a system, an order, after chaos, recreate the conditions for a higher order, a more complex level of integration. The destruction of order is accompanied by an increase in the system’s entropy. Restoring order is accompanied by a reduction in entropy, which can only be temporary and local.
This theory, known as the “theory of order through noise”, which is based on highly complex mathematical models originating with scientists such as Claude Shannon, René Thom and Benoit Mandelbrot, has found its way into network theory and thus into all telephony and digital applications, right up to artificial intelligence. It also has applications in genetics, biology, climatology and many other fields.
Some people (myself included) have tried to apply it to social order. It has been shown that music is the ordering of noise; that new music generally heralds a noise, a break in the social order, and that weak signals, weak noise, can provoke chaos, sometimes recreating a totally different order.
2025 deserves to be examined through this prism:
The previous world order, based on the domination of a few superpowers, has been undermined in a thousand ways: noises coming from market forces, technology, new geographical powers, forgotten ideologies, nature, have come to challenge it, and create disorder, chaos, which 2025 could see explode in several areas:
A military explosion; a wider war in the Middle East, with a head-on confrontation between Israel and Iran; a wider war in Europe, with Asian (North Korean) troops on the border of the European Union, a real and no longer latent war between mainland China and Taiwan; aggression by North Korea against the South; a regional conflict in East Africa, involving several Gulf powers.
A demographic explosion, with the North paying dearly for its ageing and the South paying even more for its rejuvenation. With considerable population movements.
An ecological explosion: an acceleration in climatic catastrophes, a collapse in diversity, calling into question the very survival of the human species.
An economic explosion: the world will be paralyzed by insurmountable customs barriers between the different blocs.
A technological exhibition, with technologies escaping their creators and technology firms becoming transnational and no longer obeying their governments. With, for example, Elon Musk conducting his own diplomacy independently of that of the United States.
A financial explosion, in a world more indebted than ever since records began, that could lead to a global economic collapse.
These noises are clearly chaos-inducing. In particular, they would lead to an acceleration of Europe’s decline, the disarticulation of the Union project, and a disarticulation of all alliances.
These noises could also bring order: in 2025, and in the following years, we may indeed see the establishment of a lasting armistice between Ukraine and Russia; reciprocal recognition of Israel and its neighbors, including through the creation of a Palestinian state ; the creation of a common Middle East market from Ethiopia to Iran, following the collapse of the mullahs’ regime; the establishment of a Europe of defense; the establishment of democratic use of artificial intelligence and order; the strengthening of political, financial and military integration of the member countries of the European Union. Finally, we could see the emergence of a new global geopolitical order, enabling us all to switch from the economy of death to the economy of life.
Everything depends on what humans do with these noises; if they can decipher the meaning of weak signals in time and act to give them meaning, the best is possible: theory teaches us that noises only create order if we succeed in giving them meaning. And in geopolitics, as for all of us, meaning is a project.