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PARIS — 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, instead, it interferes with the flow of information, and can ultimately destroy the system by creating chaos.
Yet after this stage, under certain conditions, this theory states that noise can 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 it is accompanied by a reduction in disorder, which can only be temporary and local.
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This theory, known as the “theory of order through noise,” which is based on highly complex mathematical models originated by scientists such as Claude Shannon, René Thom and Benoît Mandelbrot, has found its way into network theory and thus into all telephonic and digital applications — right up to artificial intelligence. It can also be applied to genetics, biology, climatology and many other fields.
Some (myself included) have tried to apply this theory to social order. We’ve been able to show that music is an orderly sequence 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 even recreating a totally different order.
The year 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 from market forces, technology, new geographical powers, forgotten ideologies and nature have come to challenge it, creating disorder and chaos, which 2025 could see explode in a number of areas.
Variations of explosions
First, is the scenario of a possible military explosion: an even more extensive war in the Middle East, with a head-on confrontation between Israel and Iran, and expanding 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, and a regional conflict in East Africa, involving several Gulf powers.
There’s also the demographic explosion, with the North paying dearly for its aging population and the South paying even more for its continued high birth rates. That is connected to the ecological explosion: an acceleration in climatic catastrophes, a collapse in biodiversity, calling into question the very survival of the human species.
We may also see an economic explosion, with the world paralyzed by insurmountable customs barriers between the various blocs. A technological explosion, with technology escaping the control of their creators and tech 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, which could lead to a global economic collapse.
Everything depends on what humans do with these noises.
These noises are clearly elements that can produce chaos, and put at particular risk the standing of Europe, and ultimately all alliances in the current world order.
Factors of order
But these noises can also be factors of order. In 2025 and beyond, a lasting armistice between Ukraine and Russia, reciprocal recognition of Israel and its neighbors, including the creation of a Palestinian state, the creation of a common market in the Middle East, from Ethiopia to Iran, following the collapse of the Islamist regime, the establishment of a Europe of defense, the democratic use of artificial intelligence, the strengthening of the political, or the financial and military integration of the member countries of the European Union.
Finally, we could see the emergence of a new world 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 scenarios become 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 the project at hand.
