If physical warfare had become too destructive to sustain civilisation, the logical alternative was to move conflict into a less lethal domain. Language offered several advantages:
1. Infinite scalability – Words can be produced endlessly.
2. Low material cost – Speech requires minimal infrastructure.
3. Psychological intensity – Meaning can generate powerful emotional responses.
4. Containment potential – Linguistic conflict can be regulated.
Thus the twentieth century began a gradual transformation from material warfare to semantic warfare. This transition was not immediate. Instead, it unfolded across decades through political rhetoric, propaganda, media battles, and ideological conflicts. (The Cold War, for example, was largely a war of narratives.) However, the final transformation occurred only after the trauma of the coronavirus pandemic.