by Elham Makdoum and Emanuel Pietrobon
Not all wars are fought with tanks and not all soldiers wear uniforms. Most conflicts, contrary to the cliché, are hybrid in nature and involve as many unconventional means, from hacks to financial speculation, as sui generis actors, from drug cartels to terrorist organizations.
Hybrid wars are the most common form of conflict and have existed since the dawn of time. Examples of this kind of conflict can even be found in the history of ancient Greece, home of trade wars and psychological operations, although the topic has only become popular in recent years. A popularity that, however, has contributed little or nothing to a better understanding of the phenomenon, around which, on the contrary, confusion and misinformation reign.
Hybrid warfare is frequently explained as something pertaining to Russia, which in turn is said to have inherited this way of viewing and experiencing conflicts from the Soviet Union, but this is not the case. Hybrid warfare has always existed and is not the prerogative of Moscow, but rather of many powers and even non-state forces such as multinational corporations and anti-state forces such as terrorisms.
Asymmetry and unconventionality, which are the distinguishing features of hybrid wars, do not imply low impact for the same means employed. On the contrary. The opposite is true: hybrid wars can and do kill because their lethality is often underestimated by those who suffer them. As in the case of the opium war launched by China on the United States.
The Third Opium War
An opioid drug that Mexican drug cartels have sophisticated and turned into one of the most powerful drugs around, the notorious fentanyl, which is fifty times more potent than heroin, is responsible for a massacre on the streets of America.
What began as an abuse crisis from antidepressant and analgesic drugs, which already left just over twenty thousand dead on the ground in 2010, has gradually evolved into an uncontrollable epidemic since 2013. Because a growing number of Americans, in order to circumvent the waste and controls of the health care system and its apparatuses, have begun to turn to crime to cure their sickness of living. The same criminality that buys its goods from Mexicans, who in turn buy opium in China. And so it is, almost by accident, that Xi's strategists have sniffed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the illicit, subcutaneous business of some triad into a limitless war having as its goal the aggravation of the Great Depression that is sweeping over their main adversary, the United States.
Since the trafficking of opium and chemical precursors to opioid drugs has changed hands, from the triads to the big pharmaceutical manufacturers, the crisis has become an epidemic. That since 2017, averaging two hundred deaths a day, has become a national health emergency.
Illegal fentanyl produced and distributed by Mexican drug traffickers with precursors made in China is zombifying America. It is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, responsible for 70 percent of all annual lethal overdoses, and is one of the issues that never fails to be on the table in China-US debates. It is the Third Opium War, in which China - mindful of its own bad end in the 1800s - is now giving the West a taste of its own medicine, through chemical and virtual drugs like TikTok. It is a no-holds-barred war, or a total hybrid war, based on the most important of Suntzi's teachings: know your enemy to beat him without fighting him.
A crypto connection behind the Beijing-Mexico City axis.
China is acting as a tempting Devil who is offering an army of depressed people an extreme solution, disguised as a pleasant experience, to their malaise: a rope with which to hang themselves. In doing so, she has secured negotiating leverage over the United States and struck a deal with Mexican narcos that may come in handy in the future.
When the bizarre anti-American alliance was formed is a matter of debate, but about where there is no doubt: the darkweb (dark web). The dark web of illegal darknet markets, where the paths of spies, contract killers and criminals cross, and where every good and service is paid for in cryptocurrency.
This is the reason why the Biden presidency, in parallel with increased cross-border controls, has decided to invest in partnerships with leading blockchain analysis agencies to monitor what is happening in the cryptoverse. If increased cross-border controls are paying off, given the 480 percent growth in seizures of illicit fentanyl between 2020 and 2023, monitoring the dark web has proven more problematic, as the Chinese criminal-industrial complex and the Mexican narco-verse have built a veritable Chinese box system in the web3.
The inviolable fence built by China into the web3, according to the Congressional Research Service, has "made it more difficult for the DEA to follow the money." The system, in effect, is follow-the-money-proof: producers and buyers never meet, either physically or virtually, their transaction is always mediated by brokers with no traceable links to the source of the precursors, and payment traces are hidden from the eye of blockchain analysis through a series of steps involving money collection companies and crypto-exchanges that enjoy the protective shield of the impenetrable Digital Great Wall.
This is the system that has allowed narcos to secure extraordinary quantities of the commodity while escaping the investigative pressure of U.S. authorities, resulting in the flooding of the streets of what was already their main market with a flood of murderous opioids. But unlike the Chinese, for whom it is politics, or rather it is war, for the narcos there is nothing personal: it is just business.
Expert in crypto-intelligence, blockchain analytics and cryptocurrency geopolitics. She collaborates with various publications. In 2023 she was a speaker at Blockchain Beach, one of the most important Italian events on cryptocurrencies, blockchain and metaverse.
Geopolitical analyst, foreign policy consultant and author. Graduate in Area and global studies for international cooperation (University of Turin), educated between Italy, Poland, Portugal and Russia. Specialized in hybrid warfare, Latin American issues and post-Soviet space.
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