A stark warning from the UK’s special envoy has cast a long shadow over the latest diplomatic manoeuvres by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Their high-stakes gamble in the Middle East, the envoy cautions, could trigger a ‘permacrisis’ — a state of perpetual instability that would cripple the region for decades. This is not the first time these two leaders have defied conventional wisdom, but the stakes today are higher than ever, with the digital architectures of power, surveillance, and control now deeply embedded in the conflict landscape.
The term ‘permacrisis’, once a buzzword for overlapping global shocks, now feels disturbingly literal. The Middle East, a region already ravaged by proxy wars, water scarcity, and resource nationalism, is being reconfigured by technologies that either escalate conflict or offer fragile levers for peace. Quantum computing is breaking traditional encryption, AI-driven drone swarms are blurring the lines between combatant and civilian, and social media algorithms are amplifying every tremor into a seismic event. Any miscalculation, the envoy implies, could lock the region into a self-sustaining loop of violence and mistrust.
Netanyahu’s coalition, increasingly reliant on AI-backed surveillance and predictive policing, views technology as a force multiplier. Trump, ever the showman, sees deals and deterrence as interchangeable. But the envoy’s perspective is grounded in the reality of user experience for ordinary people: a mother in Gaza trying to navigate a warzone with a smartphone that reroutes her through danger zones, a farmer in the West Bank whose water access is algorithmically rationed, a Syrian refugee whose digital identity is a liability at every border. These are the human costs of a tech-enabled permacrisis.
The US and UK have their own digital sovereignty concerns. The UK’s National Cyber Force has been active in the region, targeting destabilising actors but also risking collateral damage in the information domain. The envoy’s warning is as much about the unintended consequences of our own interventions as it is about the actions of Netanyahu or Trump. Microsoft’s recent reporting on Iranian cyber operations shows how state-backed groups are using Office 365 and AI to target diplomats and aid workers. The battlefield is now the cloud.
Yet the envoy’s statement is not entirely hopeless. He points to opportunities for digital diplomacy: cross-border water management powered by IoT, blockchain-based land registries that could resolve disputes, and open-source intelligence gathering that might de-escalate incidents before they spiral. But these require trust, and trust is the scarcest resource in a permacrisis. Every algorithm that predicts violence also fuels paranoia. Every encryption tool that protects activists also hides terrorists. This is the double-edged sword of our era.
So what does this mean for the rest of us? The UK, as a tech-regulating heavyweight with ambitions for AI safety leadership, must walk a tightrope. It can criticise the Netanyahu-Trump approach without alienating its allies. It can push for ethical frameworks without being naive about the region’s hard realities. The envoy’s words are a blueprint for a more measured, user-centric foreign policy where technology serves peace, not just power. The cost of failure is not just a crisis, but a permanent one. And in a world of digital dominoes, the first piece to fall might be closer to home than we think.
