Using ContactTracing—a newly developed, validated and benchmarked tool to infer the nature and conditional dependence of cell–cell interactions from single-cell transcriptomic data—we show that CIN-induced chronic activation of the cGAS–STING pathway promotes downstream signal re-wiring in cancer cells, leading to a pro-metastatic tumour microenvironment. The gene discussed is CGAS; the disease is cervical squamous intraepithelial neoplasia.