One tries to make sense of contemporary geopolitics and a pattern emerges. Two critical developments in recent years were the trade and technology wars between the United States and China and then, soon after, the great pandemic. Together they managed to shake the global system out of its benevolent torpor. Globalisation did not collapse, but it changed shape. States are again prominent even if they still operate within something like a networked global landscape. The war in Ukraine deepened these dynamics by showing that anything can be weaponised: energy, cyberspace, investment, technology, trade, the global financial system, currencies, history, religion and even food.