Adapted from a conversation with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model. Every figure below was checked against the published UCDP, PRIO, Institute for Economics & Peace and SIPRI releases on 2026-10-25. Two of the AI’s numbers were slightly off the first time; the corrected versions are what you’re reading.

I told the machine the world looked like it was getting worse. It came back with the 2024 numbers and a gentle note about negativity bias. I told it to look again. The 2025 figures came out in June 2026, and they made 2024 look like the good old days.

Which is a sentence nobody should have to write about a year with 187,000 dead.

2025, by the numbers

• 65 state-based conflicts in 35 countries. The highest count since 1946, when the data starts.
• 8 wars between states, double the year before and double again from two in 2023. Also a record. The list includes Russia and Ukraine, India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Thailand and Cambodia.
• 13 conflicts crossed 1,000 battle deaths, which is UCDP’s line for calling something a war. The most since 1992.
• About 244,600 people killed in organised violence, against roughly 187,000 in 2024.
• About 76,500 civilians killed in one-sided violence, up more than 400 percent in a year, the highest since 1994. Most of that is Sudan, and the El Fasher massacre in particular.

What drove it

Russia’s war on Ukraine stayed the deadliest conflict on Earth: at least 94,700 fatalities, about 62 percent of all battle-related deaths worldwide. That 62 percent is a share of battle deaths, not of the 244,600 total, which also counts civilians killed in one-sided attacks and fighting between non-state groups.

PRIO names the other two big drivers as the bombardment of Gaza and the violence against civilians in Sudan. The Middle East had more state-based conflicts than it has ever had. Africa still has the most conflicts of any region.

One number went the right way. Fighting between non-state groups, militias against militias with no government involved, killed about 14,500 people, the lowest since 2013. Take your good news where you find it.

Every year since 2013 has been more violent than nearly every post-Cold War year that came before it.

Peace Research Institute Oslo, June 2026

It isn’t one bad year

A single record could be a spike. This is a slope. PRIO’s report finds that the past five years produced more battle-related deaths than the entire twenty years before 2021. The old pattern was spikes with quieter years in between. Since 2021 the quieter years haven’t come.

2026 hasn’t offered one either. The war involving the United States and Iran that broke out in March lands in next year’s count.

Everyone else’s gauges agree

• Global Peace Index 2026: the world got less peaceful for the 12th year running. Russia ranks least peaceful country for the first time, followed by Sudan, the DRC, Ukraine and Israel. Iceland is still the most peaceful, which is less comforting if you don’t live in Iceland.
• More countries fighting abroad: the GPI counts 103 countries engaged in external conflict, up from 59 in 2008.
• Military spending: about $2.9 trillion in 2025 ($2,887 billion), the 11th straight annual rise, according to SIPRI.
• Killing got cheaper: the GPI cites ACLED data showing recorded drone-strike events up roughly a hundredfold from 2018 to 2025. Drones and AI targeting put lethal force within reach of states and armed groups that could never afford an air force.

The feed versus the trend line

This site is about the business of fear, so here’s the honest split. The daily feed exaggerates. It’s built to make every hour feel worse than the last, because fear keeps you scrolling, and scrolling is the product. If it feels like the world is collapsing by the minute, part of that is exposure.

The decade-long trend is a different animal. It doesn’t need an algorithm to sell it. It’s in the death counts, the conflict counts, the spending and the peace index, all moving the same direction for about ten years. Your read on it isn’t negativity bias. It’s arithmetic.

The uncomfortable pairing

Earlier in the same conversation, the AI and I had been talking about whether conscious life might be rare in the universe. Maybe very rare. Then we spent the second half counting how efficiently that rare conscious life is killing itself.

Those two thoughts sit badly next to each other. They should.

For a different conversation with the same machine, here is its take on what happens when we die.

Questions people ask

How many armed conflicts were there in 2025?

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program counted 65 armed conflicts involving at least one state in 2025, across 35 countries. That is the highest number since its records begin in 1946.

How many people died in armed conflict in 2025?

UCDP estimates about 244,600 people were killed in organised violence in 2025, up from about 187,000 in 2024. It was the second deadliest year since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, after 2022.

What was the deadliest conflict of 2025?

Russia’s war against Ukraine, with at least 94,700 fatalities recorded by UCDP, about 62 percent of all battle-related deaths worldwide.

Is the world really getting more violent, or is it just the news?

Both effects are real. The news feed exaggerates hour-to-hour change, but the long-term data shows a genuine rise: record conflict counts in 2025, more battle deaths in the past five years than in the twenty years before 2021, and 12 straight years of decline on the Global Peace Index.

How many wars between countries were there in 2025?

Eight interstate conflicts, double the year before and the most since UCDP data collection began in 1946.

Sources

• Uppsala University. “UCDP: record number of conflicts between states.” 9 June 2026. Press release
• Rustad, S. A. Conflict Trends: A Global Overview, 1946–2025. PRIO Paper, 2026. PRIO
• PRIO. “Conflicts between states highest level since World War II.” 8 June 2026. PRIO news
• Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2026. GPI
• SIPRI. “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025.” April 2026. SIPRI
• NPR interview with Therese Pettersson, UCDP. 9 June 2026. Transcript