As 2026 unfolds, it looks like international relations are becoming more Hobbesian again. States help themselves and more powerful states openly claim exceptionalism. Seemingly, international law and norms are increasingly lacking state champions to defend and enforce them and, according to Thomas Hobbes, ‘covenants without the sword, are but words, secure to no man at all’.  

In the world of digital technology, things are moving and shifting as well. We see the use of AI on the battlefield while diplomats still confer in Geneva about the rules for the use of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). Cyber operations have become mainstream in times of both peace and war as the UN starts a new round of negotiations on responsible state behaviour in cyberspace under a new, permanent global mechanism. American AI firms continue to rise on the stock exchange, built on an uncertain promise for the future, but have also become more entwined with American Big Tech platforms, the American defence industry, and Pentagon funding. Digital platforms, infrastructures and supply chains can be – and are – weaponised, fuelling policy reactions on ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘digital sovereignty’ around the world. Big Tech companies are increasingly becoming more powerful and more political as they flex their muscles internationally. Dependencies, alignments and alliances are being scrutinised, with states marking some out as vulnerabilities and building new ones to counter vulnerabilities.  

German Chancellor Scholtz characterised the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as a zeitenwende, a turning point, in Europe’s geopolitical history. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in January 2026 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the "old order is not coming back" as the world is "in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." The first year of the Trump presidency is marked by unilateralism and indicates a return to global great power politics: more swords, less words. As the world is transforming geopolitically, and digital technology is at the centre of that transformation, one question is where we are in that process of transformation. Are we still in the phase of disruption or are we past the turning point and starting to build a new, more realist, world order? What price do we pay for geopoliticisation? Will the EU sacrifice its regulatory power and the green transition on the altar of geopolitics, innovation and industrial policy? How do emerging powers in the majority world view the global political and technological landscape and how will they evaluate risks and opportunities? As the US steps back from the rules-based order will China step forward and seize the opportunity to remodel that order?

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The conference continues the work of the annual series organised by The Hague Program for Cyber Norms in its eight previous editions. These conferences have become a key multidisciplinary venue for peer-reviewed research in the study of cyber security and international stability. See our website for the program and impressions of the previous editions of the conference in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

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