World News
Can Civilisation Collapse in an Hour?
Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr Qamar Bashir analysis: For most of human history, civilisations did not die suddenly. They rose slowly, flourished over centuries, and declined through prolonged periods of decay, conquest, or exhaustion. The Roman Empire did not fall overnight. Pharaonic Egypt endured dynasties across millennia. Persian, Greek, and later imperial systems were replaced gradually by rival powers, often after decades of war, rebellion, and internal rot. Their foundations were physical—land, food, water, animals, metals, and manpower—and therefore their destruction required time, force, and mass mobilisation. That historical rhythm has now been broken.
Modern civilisation has entered a phase in which collapse is no longer necessarily slow or visible. For the first time in human history, the core operating system of society is not material but digital. Cities, institutions, economies, and even military power are no longer coordinated primarily by physical mechanisms, human judgment, or local redundancy, but by data. This shift has made modern civilisation extraordinarily efficient—and extraordinarily fragile.
In earlier eras, even when empires fell, daily life often continued. Farmers still tilled the land. Local markets still functioned. Water could still be drawn from wells. Authority might collapse, but society retained resilience because its foundations were decentralised and human-scale. Today, by contrast, modern cities function as tightly coupled machines. Their survival depends on uninterrupted flows of data that synchronise power grids, traffic systems, hospitals, supply chains, financial transactions, communications, and emergency services. When that coordination fails, the city does not merely slow down—it stops.
Electricity remains vital, whether generated by fossil fuels, nuclear plants, or renewable sources. Oil and gas still matter. But beneath energy lies something more fundamental: information. Data now directs how energy is produced, distributed, priced, and consumed. It governs logistics, storage, transportation, and payments. It manages air traffic, maritime shipping, rail networks, and road signals. It powers stock exchanges, banking systems, hospitals, and government services. Remove the data layer, and the physical infrastructure becomes blind and inert.
This is why the idea that civilisation could be crippled in an hour is no longer hypothetical. A severe disruption to critical data systems—whether through cyberattacks, malware, corrupted databases, sabotaged fibre-optic links, or compromised control software—could paralyse entire regions without a single shot being fired. The destruction would not come through explosions but through silence: dark screens, frozen systems, stalled traffic, grounded flights, empty fuel pumps, inaccessible bank accounts, and broken communication.
We have already witnessed partial versions of this vulnerability. Disruptions to energy distribution have plunged major cities into darkness. Failures in digital coordination have erased billions of dollars from financial markets in minutes. Interruptions in pipeline or logistics data have triggered fuel shortages and panic buying despite ample physical supply. These incidents reveal a sobering truth: scarcity today is often not material but informational.
The modern supply chain illustrates this danger most clearly. A grocery store shelf looks simple, but behind it lies a complex, data-driven choreography of procurement, warehousing, refrigeration, inventory forecasting, transport routing, fuel purchasing, and digital payment systems. Food does not disappear because farms stop producing; it disappears because coordination fails. When databases are corrupted or systems shut down, the entire chain collapses rapidly, even though physical goods still exist.
Transportation systems are even more exposed. Modern aviation is entirely dependent on data—navigation, scheduling, air traffic control, maintenance logs, and safety systems. Shipping relies on digital tracking, port scheduling, customs processing, and fuel optimisation. Trains and metros depend on automated signalling. Road traffic is governed by sensor-driven control systems. A serious digital failure would not only halt movement but risk catastrophic accidents across air, sea, and land.
Military power, once the domain of brute force, is now inseparable from data supremacy. Modern aircraft are flying computers. Naval fleets are networked command systems. Missile defence, surveillance, and early-warning systems rely on continuous data fusion. Even nuclear command-and-control structures are deeply digital. This reality transforms the nature of warfare. Victory no longer depends solely on destroying armies or occupying territory, but on disabling an adversary’s digital nervous system.
In such a world, resilience becomes the true measure of sovereignty. A country that cannot secure, isolate, and rapidly restore its critical data infrastructure can be defeated without ever engaging in conventional battle. Conversely, a state that masters digital defence—and offensive disruption—can neutralise rivals with minimal physical confrontation. Warfare thus shifts from mass killing to systemic paralysis.
This transformation carries grave ethical and political consequences. When cities are paralysed, civilians suffer first. Hospitals, water systems, emergency services, food distribution, and communications are all civilian infrastructures, yet they are increasingly vulnerable to digital attack. The traditional distinction between battlefield and home front dissolves. A cyber strike on data systems can harm millions of ordinary people instantly, without warning or visible aggression.
Despite this reality, global governance has not kept pace. Cybersecurity is still treated largely as a technical or national issue, addressed through firewalls, patches, and specialised units. These measures are necessary but insufficient. What is needed is a civilisational response. Data is no longer merely a commercial or strategic asset; it is the backbone of modern life. Its protection must be elevated to the level of international norms and collective responsibility.
Just as humanity eventually recognised rules governing chemical weapons, attacks on hospitals, and treatment of civilians, it must now establish clear red lines around digital infrastructure. There must be international agreements defining unacceptable attacks on civilian data systems, shared mechanisms for attribution and investigation, and credible consequences for violations. Without such frameworks, escalation will be silent, deniable, and destabilising.
At the national level, societies must rethink how they design systems. Extreme efficiency without redundancy is a recipe for collapse. Civilisation now requires layered resilience: segmented networks, offline fallbacks, manual override capacity, secure authentication, and decentralised control. Public institutions must be able to function, at least partially, when digital systems fail. Citizens must be educated to understand that convenience comes with vulnerability, and that resilience demands investment and restraint.
Elon Musk’s warning that future empires may fall not in years but in minutes is not exaggeration—it is a diagnosis. The danger is not that technology itself is destructive, but that civilisation has placed too much of its survival logic into fragile, interconnected systems without sufficient safeguards.
Humanity stands at a critical threshold. The same data-driven intelligence that has made cities cleaner, faster, and more productive could also become the instrument of unprecedented collapse. Civilisations will still rise and fall for familiar reasons—political failure, injustice, moral decay—but now they face an additional risk: sudden paralysis.
A civilisation that can be stopped in an hour must learn to protect what keeps it alive. The future will not be decided only by armies or economies, but by whether humanity can govern its own digital heartbeat. If it fails, the fall of empires will no longer be written over centuries—but logged in error reports, measured in minutes, and remembered as the moment when progress outpaced wisdom.
ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary for Information and Broadcasting Barrister Danyal Chaudhry on Monday stressed that national security was “non-negotiable” after Pakistan carried out strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan, killing over 80 terrorists.
“Pakistan has always chosen the path of dialogue and peaceful coexistence. But when Afghan soil continues to be used for proxy attacks, we have no choice but to defend our homeland. National security is non-negotiable,” Chaudhry said in a statement.
The PML-N MNA affirmed that the people of Pakistan “stand firmly” with their armed forces in the fight against terrorism.
He urged the Afghan government to take “decisive action to prevent its land from being used for cross-border militancy”, warning that lasting peace in the region depended on the “complete dismantling of terrorist sanctuaries”.
Noting that the recent operation “successfully neutralised militants involved in attacks on Pakistani soil”, Chaudhry stressed: “This action was aimed solely at those responsible for violent attacks inside Pakistan. Every precaution was taken to protect innocent lives.”
He also pointed to Afghanistan’s emergence as a “sanctuary for multiple terrorist groups”. Referring to a United Nations report, he noted that militants from 21 terror outfits were operating from Afghan territory, posing a serious threat to regional stability.
He specifically called out India’s “continued support for terrorist networks”.
“India is actively funding and training these groups, equipping them to carry out cross-border attacks against Pakistan. Such elements deserve no concessions,” the parliamentary secretary asserted.
His remarks came after Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan in a retaliatory operation targeting groups responsible for recent suicide bombings in Pakistan.
The strikes killed “more than 80 terrorists”, according to security sources.
The strikes were conducted in retaliation for a series of suicide attacks in Islamabad, Bajaur, and Bannu that had claimed the lives of Pakistani security personnel and civilians. Authorities described the operation as intelligence-based and proportionate, aimed solely at those responsible for the attacks.
‘Decisive struggle against terrorism’
Separately, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi asserted that the country will “not allow our soil to be destabilised by forces operating from across the border in Afghanistan”.
In a post on X, he said: “The citizens of Pakistan, especially the resilient people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, stand firmly with our armed forces and security institutions in the defense of our homeland.”
He further said: “The sacrifices of our martyrs bind us together as one nation. In this decisive struggle against terrorism, Pakistan stands united, resolute, and unwavering.
“Our sovereignty is non-negotiable, and the people of this country stand shoulder to shoulder with the state to protect it at all costs.”
A total of 1,557 Venezuelan political prisoners have applied for amnesty under a new law introduced on Thursday, the country’s National Assembly President has said.
Jorge Rodríguez, brother of Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez and an ally of former President Nicolás Maduro, also said “hundreds” of prisoners had already been released.
Among them is politician Juan Pablo Guanipa, one of several opposition voices to have criticised the law for excluding certain prisoners.
The US has urged Venezuela to speed up its release of political prisoners since US forces seized Maduro in a raid on 3 January. Venezuela’s socialist government has always denied holding political prisoners.
At a news conference on Saturday Jorge Rodríguez said 1,557 release requests were being addressed “immediately” and ultimately the legislation would extend to 11,000 prisoners.
The government first announced days after Maduro’s capture, on 8 January, that “a significant number” of prisoners would be freed as a goodwill gesture.
Opposition and human rights groups have said the government under Maduro used detentions of political prisoners to stamp out dissent and silence critics for years.
These groups have also criticised the new law. One frequently cited criticism is that it would not extend amnesty to those who called for foreign armed intervention in Venezuela, BBC Latin America specialist Luis Fajardo says.
He noted that law professor Juan Carlos Apitz, of the Central University of Venezuela, told CNN Español that that part of the amnesty law “has a name and surname”. “That paragraph is the Maria Corina Machado paragraph.”
It is not clear if the amnesty would actually cover Machado, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Fajardo said.
He added that other controversial aspects of the law include the apparent exclusion from amnesty benefits of dozens of military officers involved in rebellions against the Maduro administration over the years.
On Saturday, Rodríguez said it is “releases from Zona Seven of El Helicoide that they’re handling first”.
Those jailed at the infamous prison in Caracas would be released “over the next few hours”, he added.
Activists say some family members of those imprisoned in the facility have gone on hunger strike to demand the release of their relatives.
US President Donald Trump said that El Helicoide would be closed after Maduro’s capture.
Maduro is awaiting trial in custody in the US alongside his wife Cilia Flores and has pleaded not guilty to drugs and weapons charges, saying that he is a “prisoner of war”.
Students at several universities in Iran have staged anti-government protests – the first such rallies on this scale since last month’s deadly crackdown by the authorities.
The BBC has verified footage of demonstrators marching on the campus of the Sharif University of Technology in the capital Tehran on Saturday. Scuffles were later seen breaking out between them and government supporters.
A sit-in was held at another Tehran university, and a rally reported in the north-east. Students were honouring thousands of those killed in mass protests in January.
The US has been building up its military presence near Iran, and President Donald Trump has said he is considering a limited military strike.
The US and its European allies suspect that Iran is moving towards the development of a nuclear weapon, something Iran has always denied.
US and Iranian officials met in Switzerland on Tuesday and said progress had been made in talks aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.
But despite the reported progress, Trump said afterwards that the world would find out “over the next, probably, 10 days” whether a deal would be reached with Iran or the US would take military action.
The US leader has supported protesters in the past – at one stage appearing to encourage them with a promise that “help is on its way”.
Footage verified by the BBC shows hundreds of protesters – many with national Iranian flags – peacefully marching on the campus of the Sharif University of Technology at the start of a new semester on Saturday.
The crowds chanted “death to the dictator” – a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and other anti-government slogans.
Supporters of a rival pro-government rally are seen nearby in the video. Scuffles are later seen breaking out between the two camps.
Verified photos have also emerged showing a peaceful sit-in protest at the capital’s Shahid Beheshti University.
The BBC have also verified footage from another Tehran university, Amir Kabir University of Technology, showing chanting against the government.
In Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city in the north-east, local students reportedly chanted: “Freedom, freedom” and “Students, shout, shout for your rights”.
Sizeable demonstrations in other locations were also reported later in the day, with calls for further rallies on Sunday.
It is not immediately clear whether any demonstrators have been arrested.
Last month’s protests began over economic grievances and soon spread to become the largest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) said it had confirmed the killing of at least 6,159 people during that wave, including 5,804 protesters, 92 children and 214 people affiliated with the government.
Hrana also said it was investigating 17,000 more reported deaths.
Iranian authorities said late last month that more than 3,100 people had been killed – but that the majority were security personnel or bystanders attacked by “rioters”.
Saturday’s protests come as the Iranian authorities are preparing for a possible war with the US.
The exiled opposition is adamantly calling on President Trump to make good on his threats and strike, hoping for a quick downfall of the current hardline government.
But other opposition groups are opposed to outside intervention.
The opposing sides have been involved in disinformation campaigns of social media, trying to maximise their conflicting narratives of what Iranian people want.
Additional reporting by BBC Persian’s Ghoncheh Habibiazad, and BBC Verify’s Richard Irvine-Brown and Shayan Sardarizadeh.
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