Heartland vs. Rimland 3.0: Will AI Reshape the Great Game?
Oct 12, 2025
History is a dialectic. As advocates of the "longue durée" have pointed out, it rests on millennia-old geographic and civilizational foundations. At the same time, it evolves under the impact of great technological and military revolutions.
For the past two centuries, world history has been defined by the struggle between land and sea powers for control of the world’s heart: the “Great Game.” Are we, with AI, at the turning point in this confrontation?
We recall Mackinder’s theory, expanded by Spykman: “Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”
Launched in the 19th century by the rivalry between Britain’s maritime empire and Russia’s land empire, the confrontation extended throughout the 20th century between Britain’s heir, the United States, and Russia’s heir, the USSR.
Despite temporary setbacks such as communist victories in East Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam…), it was ultimately American power that decisively prevailed at the end of the 20th century. The U.S. successfully turned China to its advantage in the 1980s, brought most of Eastern Europe into its orbit in the 1990s, and gained control over the greater part of the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya…) in the early 2000s. By doing so, it imposed its currency, controlled most trade routes, and secured a near-uncontested global ideological and military dominance well into the 2010s. A victory for American maritime power that the digital revolution seemed to have definitively consecrated with Thomas Friedman's "flat world" theory (1).
Today, America’s leadership is visibly challenged.
China and the BRICS are rising. Russia has resurged militarily against NATO expansion with its “special military operation” in Ukraine (2). U.S. influence in the Middle East is waning (3)... Anglo-Saxon supremacy over the rimland is crumbling, even as the new Russo-Chinese alliance—strengthened by a now "limitless" partnership, the development of the Silk Roads, and SCO agreements—today controls the heart of the Eurasian heartland..
An alliance that, as we saw at the Tianjin meeting (4), now brings together the archetypal heartland that Mackinder and Spykman recommended avoiding at all costs: one that, through its control of resources, trade routes, and Eurasia's transportation infrastructure, could become the impregnable heart of the world. A global pivot, at the epicenter of tomorrow's economic growth zones. A center of gravity that nothing could resist, risking leaving the USA on the margins of the world, still retaining—besides the Anglosphere—Europe, Japan, and South Korea under its control, but in clear geopolitical decline.
Could the AI revolution change the balance and give American dominance a second life?
This seems to be Washington’s new bet, especially since the breakthrough of generative AI.
Born in Silicon Valley labs, isn’t AI an extension of the flat, fluid digital world on which globalist America built its power? A way to impose its already-dominant digital services and tomorrow disrupt offshore itself with the coming agentic revolution? An opportunity to seize the next wave of global economic growth? A strategic lever to control opinion and reinforce military power, as we outlined in "Mind Wars"?
This is the goal of the U.S. AI Action Plan announced in July 2025, complementing massive programs already underway with tech leaders, such as the $500 billion StarGate initiative. The declared objective: “achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” through three pillars:
- Accelerating U.S. research and innovation in AI, fueled by massive deregulation.
- Building new mega AI factories and associated energy infrastructures.
- Deploying an aggressive digital diplomacy to impose U.S. AI models and contain any competition.
Will the US AI Action Plan be enough to counter China’s rise?
Nothing is certain. While digital technologies disrupt value chains, we too often forget that the economy remains fundamentally physical: raw materials, energy, manufacturing, transport, etc. As the U.S. races toward superintelligence, China takes a more modest yet pragmatic path—embedding AI across every sector of its economy.
For over a decade, China has aimed to become the world leader in AI by 2030.
- Favoring not proprietary models but open-source innovation, fostering hyper-competition, rapid diffusion, and low-cost applications.
- Prioritizing not just digital services but industrial applications, robotics, and IoT. While the West speaks loudly of Industry 5.0, China already operates the world’s most automated “dark factories.”
- Focusing not on raw power races but on cost optimization. As shown by the “Sputnik moment” of DeepSeek’s launch, China can produce models nearly as capable as U.S. pioneers at 100x lower training costs.
The numbers speak: According to the 2025 Stanford AI Index Report, China accounts for more than 60% of all granted AI patents worldwide from 2010 to 2023. AI is also central to its Belt & Road strategy, with the Digital Silk Road initiative (5).
Heartland vs. Rimland: Is AI the new battlefield of the Great Game?
In parallel with the struggle over resources (energy, rare earths…) and trade routes (pipelines, silk roads, north-south and east-west corridors, Arctic passages), a new titanic contest is unfolding in the digital sphere. A mirror confrontation where the rimland’s new trading posts are digital nodes:
- Deployment of Chinese fiber optics and 5G/6G networks across Asia, the Indo-Pacific, and Africa to challenge Western control.
- Launch of Qianfan, Guowang, and Geespace satellite constellations to counter Starlink and Kuiper.
- Rise of cloud, smart city, and AI projects worldwide, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, rivaling Stargate’s ventures in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
As often, the U.S. plays the card of unvarnished military-economic domination and intimidation, while China advances more diplomatically but steadily. Responding to embargoes with homegrown industry. Countering the U.S. AI plan at the Shanghai World Global AI Conference with calls for a global AI governance action plan respecting sovereignty. Promoting open innovation and cost mastery, while setting its new AI+ plan goal: a fully “AI-driven” society by 2035. A message that resonates—not only in emerging markets but also in the U.S. itself. As Andreessen Horowitz recently noted, 80% of new U.S. startups now rely on Chinese models.
In his recent work on the Holocene, historian Peter Turchin (6) emphasized how great military revolutions have driven history.
- It was to counter nomadic raiders from the heartland that the great rimland empires—China, Persia, later Russia—were forged.
- In the past two centuries—a brief moment in human history—it was the Western maritime-military Gunboat revolution that weakened these land empires, particularly China, forced into “unequal treaties” in the 19th century after being the world’s leading power until the 18th.
- Every threat generates a counter-reaction. Perhaps we are at a historical reversal where, paradoxically, the AI threat from U.S. maritime power may consolidate the new heartland around the SCO.
In this struggle, as RAND recently highlighted in its foresight scenarios, the battle for AI will be decisive (7).
To paraphrase Spykman: “Who dominates AI, dominates the rimland. Who dominates the rimland, dominates the world.”
The new phase of the Great Game has only just begun…
The fifth and final post in our new Future of War series will be published at the end of October. Click here to subscribe >
'THE NEW GREAT GAME' is the fourth post of our 'Future of War' series. The previous posts of this series, 'WARFARE 6.0', 'MIND WARS', and 'RACE AGAINST THE MACHINES' can be found here >
(1) Nearly as famous as "The End of History" from Fukuyama, "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" from Thomas Friedman—2005 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award—was a milestone in the US rhetoric that globalization and technology have "flattened" the world, reshaping economies and geopolitics forever.
(2) Following Mackinder and Spykman's vision, the US geopolitical strategy led by Kissinger and Brzezinski has always been to try to weaken Russia and avoid at all costs its alliance with Germany. It was one of the strategic reasons for the US to destabilize Ukraine in 2014, which ultimately led to today's war. If this policy has succeeded in strengthening the US's grip on Europe so far, it has also strengthened the Russia-China alliance, which may ultimately pose a much greater threat to the US's long-term geopolitical interests.
(3) The disastrous US retreat from Afghanistan, the weakening of US ties with Pakistan, which is now close to China, the growing influence of China in the Middle East—shown by the treaty between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the recent military alliance between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—and the recent Indian-US tensions over US tariffs, show how the US is progressively losing ground.
(4) The SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) is a political, economic, and security alliance founded in 2001 by China, Russia, and Central Asian states to promote regional stability, counterterrorism, and cooperation, and which has expanded over time to include India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, and others. At the 2025 Tianjin SCO summit, with presence from leaders such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, along with observers and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the Tianjin Declaration and the SCO Development Strategy emphasized unity, multilateralism, and a "new global order" with China challenging "Cold War mentality" and unilateral coercion. This largest gathering in SCO history laid out multiyear goals for cooperation in trade, energy, digital economy, sustainable development, infrastructure, and governance, aiming to position the SCO as a vehicle for a more multipolar, non-Western-dominated international order.
(5) China's One Belt One Road (OBOR), launched in 2013 and renamed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2016, is a global infrastructure and economic development initiative aimed at boosting trade and connectivity across Asia, Europe, and Africa through land ("Belt") and maritime ("Road") routes. It funds railways, ports, highways, and energy projects to enhance China's global influence and economic integration. The Digital Silk Road (DSR), announced in 2015 as part of OBOR, extends this vision into the digital realm. It promotes cooperation in telecommunications, e-commerce, smart cities, satellites, and emerging technologies like AI and 5G. Its goal is to build digital infrastructure, set standards, and expand China's role in shaping global digital ecosystems.
(6) Peter Turchin is the founder of Cliodynamics, which we covered in our "History's Formula" Post. In his newest book, "The Great Holocene Transformation" (2025), Peter Turchin examines the sweeping changes over the last ~10,000 years (the Holocene) by which human societies evolved from small bands of foragers into sprawling, state-based civilizations. His central thesis in the book is that the dominant driver of that transformation was competition between societies—especially warfare—which selected through "Cultural Multilevel Selection" societies that developed better internal coordination, governance, ideology, and institutions compared to their rivals. Interestingly, he highlights in his latest blog posts, "The Deep Roots of Geopolitics" I and II, how mirroring empires grew under the pressure of heartland nomads after the Iron-Cavalry military revolution, how they were weakened by the Gunboat military revolution, and how today's US pressure on China may have an unintended inverse effect.
(7) In its latest report, "How Artificial General Intelligence Could Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations: Visions for Potential AGI Futures", RAND argues that AI will be the fulcrum of the future competitiveness of nations.
