A new lens for a war we no longer understand (Quantum Framework™)

This last days, like many in the field, I’ve been busy. And tired.

Tired of watching the same cycle unfold: hot takes, reactive posts, and content flooding our feeds pretending to be clarity.

So much noise. Like SO MUCH.

Even in our profession (intelligence) I really think we’re losing the thread.

What is our role, really?
To replace news outlets?
To drop raw facts?
To repost videos of bombs, speeches, collapsed buildings?

I don’t think so.

At least, that’s not what I deliver to my clients.

My work is strategic.

Since the start of the recent escalations, I’ve received messages E-VE-RY-DAY.

Requests for analysis.
Invitations to comment.
Cries for clarity.

I read too much nonsense. Or, more precisely: too many partial truths.

Each interpretation holds a FRAGMENT of meaning.

But they fail to grasp the larger, deeper structure.

Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly developing a concept.

Time has come to give birth... to this baby.

Some of you understood already that the Grey Zone is also a space of conceptual exploration.

An intellectual zone of ambiguity, complexity, and new models.

I believe this Iran-Israel conflict is a perfect illustration of the idea I’ve been developing: a difficult one to articulate, but essential.

I call it: the Quantum Framework™.

Not because these states are deploying quantum weapons or AI-enabled teleportation...

But because the principles of quantum physics help me understand the nature of this conflict, and more broadly, the architecture of modern power.

What we're going to see below is a completely new concept: the application of quantum principles to geopolitical and narrative analysis.

Stay with me.

I swear you're going to see things in a clearer way at the end of this piece (writing this I still don't know if this is just going to be one piece, or a series).

I’ll do my best to be clear and pedagogical.

And your feedback is most welcome.

Let’s begin.

Why Quantum mechanics: a personal note

At this point you might be thinking:

Oriane… seriously? Quantum now? You’ve lost it.

I promise, it's going to make sense.

All the curious minds I know eventually stumble onto this topic.

If you’re obsessed with understanding the world, sooner or later, you land here. Quantum mechanics is like a rite of passage.

You won't master it (and beware of those who say they do!) but, it forces you to confront the limits of how we define truth, causality, and time.

I’m not a physicist.

And this concept I’m going to introduce has little to do with actual quantum science.

I’m borrowing the core principles and applying them metaphorically, strategically.

My interest came from necessity.

From a realization that classical frameworks (linear logic, fixed alliances, binary choices) can't explain the world we live in.

They don’t explain why global events echo across continents in ways we can’t predict.

So I started reading. And in quantum mechanics, I found metaphors that were more useful, more accurate, than ANYTHING I’d learned in international relations.

I. Here's what you need to understand about Quantum principles (applied to strategy)

1. Entanglement: everything reacts to everything

In quantum mechanics, two particles can become entangled. When they are, changing one will instantly affect the other, no matter the distance between them.

In geopolitics: a drone strike in Iran reshapes political calculations in Lebanon, triggers financial speculation in Singapore, and alters military deployments in Cyprus.

This is how modern influence operates: instant, borderless, and multi-dimensional.

Entanglement helps me illustrate the fact that we don't deal with isolated fronts. Everything is now a network of sensitive interdependencies.

Miss one node, and you misread the entire system.

2. Superposition: multiple truths at once

Before you observe a quantum system, it exists in multiple states simultaneously. Schrödinger’s cat is alive and dead, until you open the box.

In warfare: is Israel acting in defense, aggression, deterrence, or provocation? The answer is: all of the above. Until you define your frame!

Most analysts fail here. They want ONE answer. But strategic ambiguity lives in the coexistence of conflicting realities.

Accepting the paradoxes, living with the contradiction.

Superposition is... how you embrace paradox.

To read narratives in parallel.

And to stop expecting consistency in a world that thrives on calculated ambiguity.

3. The effect of observation

In quantum physics, the act of measuring (observing) a system changes it.

In modern warfare: The moment an attack is filmed, broadcasted, commented, or reframed, its meaning shifts. A missile becomes a message, a myth, a media weapon.

We have entered an era where every observer is also a participant. This is something I understood when I was a journalist in Israel and the West Bank.

I know it's not a mainstream viewpoint, but it was MY truth.

When I was covering this damn conflict, I was thinking that I - as a journalist - was playing a role in this war. As an observer and narrator of the conflict, I was playing a direct role, crystallizing their narratives into a moment.

One day, during a night of violences in East Jerusalem I was covering, I thought: if I weren't here, with the camera and team, at 8PM for showtime... would they really be here killing each other?

I don't have the answer to that.

The battlefield is a narrative-space, and we’re all inside it.

4. Non-linear time

In the quantum world, time isn’t linear (hi, Einstein!).

Events can loop.
Past and future influence each other.

Strategically: what we experience today is not only a consequence of 1979 or 1948. It is also the preparation for 2040. It's about two OLD nations, people with their beautiful cultures, history, narratives. It's about future fears projected into present actions.

Time in conflict is a topic I've been exploring largely in the last years. Particularly because the idea of time is different depending on the culture.

Understanding non linearity of time, is also understanding why some actors act as what's perceived as "irrational", because they are not responding to the present, but to deep historical timelines embedded in collective memory. Because they are already building a long term vision in the present, that is hard to apprehend particularly for westerners with a very linear vision of time.

It also reveals how symbolic timing (anniversaries, holy days, traumatic echoes) is used as a lever of strategic control.

These four principles (entanglement, superposition, observer effect, and non-linear time) are my mental operating system.

And when you adopt this lens, something happens:

You stop seeing global events as isolated facts.
You start seeing them as layered, interdependent, unstable.

Ok cool, so that was the fundamental.

Let’s break them down.