Technology and modernity

The four books of this axis form, within Hermínio Cerqueira’s work, a coherent and progressive doctrinal system on contemporary digital conflict: from the geopolitics of the fifth dimension (Guerra Cibernética) to the strategic thesis on the qubit as the new axis of power (Cyberwar Quântica), from there to the operational manual for post-quantum migration (Manual de Cibersegurança Quântica) and, finally, to the turn of attention toward the inside of organizations (Ameaça Interna). Written and completed between May and June 2026, they share a recognizable method — systematic anchoring in primary sources (NIST, ENISA, CISA, EUR-Lex, CCDCOE), explicit calibration of the robustness of each statement, constant attention to the Portuguese case within the European and Atlantic framework — and a common conviction: that digital security has ceased to be a sectoral technical matter and has become a condition of sovereignty, social trust, and civilizational continuity. Read together, they probably constitute the most extensive body of work published in Portuguese on cyber defense and the post-quantum transition.

Axis 5 is the most philosophical of Hermínio Cerqueira’s work and revolves around a single conceptual gesture: replacing the term “artificial intelligence,” declared functionally dead, with the concept of synthetic intelligence — cognitive capability obtained through the deliberate composition of characterizable parts, not through the imitation of a hypothetical human intelligence. The concept, formally proposed in the opening book of the Portuguese and English series, is not confined to this axis: it reappears in Part VIII of Guerra Cibernética (defensive and offensive AI, meaningful human control), in the chapter of the Manual de Cibersegurança Quântica on the quantum–AI interface and, above all, in the author’s own methodological declarations, which describe his tool-assisted writing practice as a transparent exercise in synthetic intelligence — tools for the mechanical work; judgment and responsibility, exclusively human. It is on this axis that the author’s technical and literary work touch most clearly.