World politics has changed, claims Bruno Maçães. Geopolitics is no longer simply a contest to control territory: in this age of advanced technology, it has become a contest to create the territory. Great powers seek to build a world for other states to inhabit, while keeping the ability to change the rules or the state of the world when necessary. At a moment when the old concepts no longer work, this book aims to introduce a radically new theory of world politics and technology. Understood as 'world building', the most important events of our troubled times suddenly appear connected and their inner logic is revealed: technology wars between China and the United States, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the energy transition. To conclude, Maçães considers the more distant future, when the metaverse and artificial intelligence become the world, a world the great powers must struggle to build and control.

‘The control of physical territory defined international relations for centuries. But in our increasingly technopolar age, it’s the power to create new spaces - virtual, economic, even physical - that matters most. Bruno Maçães brilliantly captures this shift in World Builders, showing how the ability to build and control the technological infrastructure underpinning the very arenas in which states compete for supremacy has become the defining feature of contemporary geopolitics. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the forces driving global power in the 21st century.’

Ian Bremmer - founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media

‘An altogether fascinating and deeply troubling book.’

William Dalrymple - author of The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

‘In this original and richly sourced book, Bruno Maçães argues that the technological revolution is transforming the very “geo” in geopolitics. It’s a sophisticated and highly stimulating argument, with which everyone interested in international affairs will want to engage.’

Timothy Garton Ash - author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe

‘Bruno Maçães is a truly original thinker. He pulls the world apart before your eyes before reassembling it for you later. World Builders is not simply an important book, it is a great book.’

Ivan Krastev - author of Is It Tomorrow Yet? Paradoxes of the Pandemic

‘Astoundingly good. One of the most lively, erudite, insightful, wide-ranging and original books on the contemporary global condition. In beautifully written prose, it shows the ways in which modern politics is marked by a new project of world building. This project, enabled by breathtaking technological developments, will radically alter the way in which we think of states, markets and our sense of self.’

Pratap Bhanu Mehta - author of The Burden of Democracy

‘In World Builders, a seminal work in several respects, Bruno Maçães treats the world as a perception: who models the perception commands the world. The new science of geopolitics not only studies how to rule an existing world as the old did, but - through virtual reality, wars, and economic interests - it shows how, God-like, to create new worlds and command them. What is the world thus becomes fluid. World Builders is your guide to these malleable new worlds.’

Branko Milanovic - author of Capitalism, Alone

‘Bold. Authentic. Sharp.’

Marietje Schaake - former Member of the European Parliament, author of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley

‘The genius of Bruno Maçães is his impossibly deft and clear navigation of the intersection of history, policy, business and technology - combining dogged reporting from the ground that instructs where we are going. We have entered an entirely new paradigm of world politics - one most Americans are in denial about. World Builders makes crystal clear its dynamics and the rapidly changing and unstoppable technology that will be at its foundation.’

Christopher M. Schroeder - global venture investor and chairman of The German Marshall Fund

‘Maçães knows the Internet can deliver us from the tyranny of place - but Eurasia, East Asia, and America won’t go down without a fight.’

Peter Thiel - co-founder of Paypal and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

‘Bruno Maçães brings a powerful lens onto the new era of world politics. Amazing in grasp, bold and yet subtle in its argument, intensely aware of current events it is nothing less than a philosophy of history for our age. An intellectual feast.’

Luuk van Middelaar - founding Director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics and author of Pandemonium: Saving Europe

‘In an age when practice again races ahead of theory, when technology confronts us with new moral challenges such as virtual reality, there is great need for philosophical thinkers like Maçães who are able to throw light into the growing darkness surrounding us.’

George Yeo - former Foreign Minister of Singapore and author of George Yeo: Musings