Just Finished Reading: The Future of Violence – Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones – Confronting the New Age of Threat by Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum (FP: 2015)

Covering much the same territory as my previous ‘future’ reading (Future Crimes) and from the same point of view (US centric) this was both a much higher quality and higher focus read. The focus here is not street or community level responses to future threats but the response of governments to the future heading our way at a steadily increasing pace. This was much more about governance and attempted to answer the question: In a world where a bored teenager half way around the world can crash a plane or crash a nuclear power station for their laptop how can any government possibly fulfil its prime directive of protecting its citizens from harm?

The good old days have gone. Our enemies, both foreign and domestic, no longer have to be physically located in the state they attack or even physically attack it at all. They can devise a piece of malware software and release it on-line to spread of its own accord. In the near future they could weponise Ebola or Smallpox in a lab set up in their garage to get back at their college girlfriend and start an unstoppable epidemic. In the foreseeable future someone with an axe to grind could remotely pilot a drone over the Superbowl and spray the entire area with Anthrax. How do you stop this happening? The short answer is that you can’t, the longer answer (laid out in this endless fascinating book) is that despite this we are far from helpless. Despite steadily losing power Vis a Vis an educated population growing in power with each technological advance governments can still enact new laws, update old ones, ensure that laws are enforced, adequately fund and train law enforcement agencies and create new agencies where required. Governments can encourage (or force) technology companies to design their products in such a way that they are difficult to turn into weapons in the wrong hands, they can partner with private industries to monitor misuse of the Internet and other enablers to reduce the low level attacks to acceptable levels whilst gaining early warning of anything bigger. Governments can hire expertise in all of the areas it feels vulnerable – software engineers (or even hackers themselves), robotics engineers, bio-technicians, communications experts and, when things get up close and personal, actual mercenaries. Buy-in experts from a whole host of industries will, it seems, be an ever more important part of future government.

Of course, even with the best will in the world, no one country can police the world in order to make it safer for their citizens. For one thing the cost of doing so would be astronomic. For another things countries tend to get rather testy when another country violates its sovereignty no matter the good cause so enabled. This, therefore, is the realm of diplomacy, international and bilateral agreements between nation states. Despite how highly sovereignty is valued in today’s world the nature of future global threats will, the authors believe, lead to more and closer ties between nations. The ever present flies in the ointment are, as we all know, both rogue and failed states. How those are handled by future governments will help to define the nature of future threats. Then there is, always, the option of unilateral action. Any nation feeling threatened may, in the absence of any other reasonable option, decide to go it alone to eliminate the treat no matter where it originates. We’ve already seen this over the last 50 years with rendition and drone strikes. This trend will no doubt continue and expand as more countries feel that the treat warrants the act and who feel that they can surf the wave of international criticism.

In an age where everyone has the equivalent of a nuclear weapon App on their smartphone all, at least according to the two authors, is not lost. There is much that individuals and communities can do to protect themselves, there is much that technology companies can do to limit the damage caused by their products, and there is still much that governments can do domestically and internationally to protect their citizens from harm. The nature of future threats – that of the many versus the many – will change the nature of war, violence and crime. It cannot help but change the nature of society and government. The changes will happen one way or another. The authors see that governments can be part of the solution if they act in good time and with an adequate understanding of the new age of threat. Although almost exclusively focused on American government and jurisprudence this is a book that anyone from any advanced country can get something from. Interesting, well thought out and thought provoking if a little ‘science-fiction’ at times. Recommended for anyone interested or worried about the future. One more book on the Dark Future to come and then onto 3 books on The City.