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Just Finished Reading: Future War by Christopher Coker (FP: 2015)

This was the last of my ‘Dark Future’ reads and the only one that didn’t turn out as expected. I was expecting speculation on robots and AI, the increased use of drones (and encounters with enemy counter-drones), wars in cyberspace and outer space and more besides – essentially geeking out on all things warlike. OK, there was some of that mentioned in passing that wasn’t really what this book was about. It was, primarily, about how to think about future war and less about the weapons that we will end up using in them.

This is, I think, for one very good reason the author spends some time on in the opening chapter – the difficulty (some would say impossibility) of predicting the future. Sensibly the author does not look too far ahead and, generally, restricts himself to the year 2035 – only 20 years in advance of the publication date. As technology accelerates forward and upward at an ever increasing rate this at least restricts the probability of deductive failure to acceptable limits. Speculating on the technology of, for example, 100 years hence is frankly silly in anything other than a science-fiction novel. One thing that the author does make a firm prediction on, and where I definitely agree with him, is that war will most definitely exist in a recognisable form over the next 50 years (and beyond) and shows no signs of going away as long as we can call ourselves humans. War and humanity are a package deal.

Before getting down to some detail – as much as you can in this sort of arena – the author speculated on some of the boundaries of future conflict up to and including a limited nuclear war which, some of his fellow futurologists speculate, could tip our overly complex civilisation into a crash scenario. He also points to some interesting studies which speculate that conflict and later organised warfare not only gave raise to our civilisations but deeply moulded our bodies and our brains effectively hardwiring war into our DNA. So much of our culture, indeed our very language, in derived from or centred around warfare (or its substitutes) that it’s hard to think of a world without it. War is a massive driver of our technology and is either directly or indirectly responsible for much we take for granted in the modern world from computers to international jet travel. War will also lead to another great technological breakthrough – the rise of intelligent robots. The author stresses here that robots will be used in their early incarnations as human assistance devices – to carry heavy loads, to protect or recover troops, to watch the skies. Only later, as the technology advances, will they go into combat themselves largely as human substitutes to help save lives in an increasingly dangerous environment. As machines start fighting machines there will be no place for humans on the battlefield – but then the question arises will whatever takes place still be war in any sense that we would understand?

What kind of war can we expect in the future? Will the Great Powers come to conflict? Will American eventually fight China for domination of the Pacific or are such direct conflicts a thing of the past? Will future wars be ‘cool’ wars fought through economics, the cyber theft of secrets, political manipulation and long-term sabotage and targeted assassination? Will war simply move into cyberspace leaving behind a seemingly peaceful world in reality (or hyper/virtual-reality) wracked by code wars? Will future conflict be non-linear, deniable, and sporadic even privatised or contracted out? Could future wars be the long anticipated corporate wars fought with hired mercenary soldiers over market share and resource acquisition? Or will future wars be fought between high-tech street gangs, drug cartels and state of the art para-military police forces is vast urban slums? Future wars will, inevitably, be multi-faceted and mutable in a world where technology can be downloaded, modified and used in ways its designers never envisaged and where the power to weaponise almost anything is in the hands of billions.

This is quite a hard book to pin down and an almost impossible one to precise adequately. It is primarily about the idea of war rather than the techniques and technologies of conflict. War is all too familiar but will it remain so? Can we predict how it will evolve so that we can shape the outcomes and prevent the kind of global catastrophes all too common in speculative science-fiction. If we are to survive the arguably inevitable future wars we need to understand them. This book attempts to aid that discussion and does a pretty good job too. Recommended.

Cartoon Time.

Thinking About: Catalonia

The first word that comes to mind when I think about the Catalonia situation is: Crazy. It’s crazy because it’s so unnecessary. It’s also crazy because it’s been so badly handled. Indeed the whole situation is an example of how NOT to handle a political crisis. I’m sure that in years to come – no matter the longer term outcome – books will be written about it explaining how not to respond in similar situations if you want things to go well.

OK, I can kind of understand where Madrid are coming from. A prosperous part of their country, already with a fair amount of regional autonomy, talked about independence and actually tried (and mostly succeeded) to hold a referendum on that question. Madrid went in hot and heavy to stop it, rather ironically calling the resultant crackdown on people voting as protecting democracy. That, I think, was their first big mistake from which all else follows. Although the result looked like an overwhelming majority vote for independence now we’ll never actually know because the referendum was too disrupted to be valid. What the Madrid government should have done is said: OK, we don’t agree with you voting on the issue and any costs will be covered by the Catalan government. If you want the vote to go ahead we want independent (EU?) observers there to make sure that everything is above board. Then we’ll see what people really think about it. If the vote goes heavily for independence (or even significantly in that direction) Madrid should then have offered talks to see what should be done about it – either within Spain if the vote is significant rather than overwhelming or (maybe) in Paris moderated by other EU members if the independence vote is beyond doubt. Then they talk, and deal and sort it. But no, the Spanish government decided to push it, and then push it again until the Catalan government were essentially forced into a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). Of course now Madrid feel forced into their response and have dismissed the Catalan government and will now (at least try to) run the regional government directly. Which, naturally, gives the Catalan government and its people just too options – capitulate or resist. I’m guessing they won’t capitulate. What Madrid will do next, well if the last few weeks are anything to go by they will force the issue then, if things were not messed up enough already, things could get really messy really fast.

The EU are not exactly helping by repeatedly saying it’s an internal Spanish issue. It’s actually a European issue and the EU should have mediators (and observers) both in Madrid and Barcelona before things get completely out of hand and to prevent that happening in the first place, a case of better late than never. They should be there calming things down and not simply sitting on their hands seconds just after they’ve washed them. All sides in the dispute need to be adults, realise that there is a problem that needs to be resolved and sit down in a room and work on its resolution. You do not solve problems in a democracy with the use of force. In a democracy you talk and talk and then talk some more until you come to a compromise that everyone can live with. The independence genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going to be easy to put it back. Madrid should face up to the possibility that eventually Catalonia will be an independent state within the national boundary of Spain. Really, what difference does it make? Would it really be the end of the world if more regions broke away and Spain became a federal country? Does the Madrid government really want to violently hold their country together and do they honestly believe that violence and the threat of violence can do that? Crazy.

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Just Finished Reading: Stop This Man! By Peter Rabe (FP: 1955)

For three time loser Tony Catell it looked like a gift of a job, one that was almost too good to be true. A bunch of scientists where going to run experiments on a gold bar and took almost no precautions to keep it safe. Breaking into the lab was easy. Walking off with a fortune in gold was even easier – just an elderly guard to put out of action. Easy money. Except for one thing. Unknown to the guy who planned the heist there had been an accident and the gold bar was radioactive. So when Tony contacted the fence he was told that the gold was useless until the radioactivity had worn off. Thinking he was being double crossed – who had ever heard of such a thing as radioactive gold? – Tony used his contacts to set up a buyer in LA. But as he crossed the country with the FBI on his tail, Geiger counters in hand, and starting to feel strangely sick those unlucky enough to be around him begin to discover that both Tony and his loot are literally too hot to handle.

I remember seeing an old 50’s film noir that had a similar plot to this except the box of radioactive ‘stuff’ was far deadlier that a mildly irradiated lump of gold. It was an interesting idea obviously tapping into the understandable interest in and ignorance of all things radioactive (there’s actually a brief science bit that didn’t make a whole lot of sense). Tony is no hero – actually he’s a really nasty piece of work dealing roughly with his friends, his women (especially his women) and anyone who crosses him. Being of the age it is the violence throughout the book isn’t as graphic as it is today but there’s enough of it to go around. I’d say probably a good 25-30% of the main cast die in one way or another. It was a quick read though – only 221 pages in my edition – without much need to pause and think about much. The plot was simple, the baddies where suitably bad, the good guys where good (and not very bright) and the end was fairly predictable. Not exactly the greatest crime novel I’ve ever read but reasonable enough for a quiet relaxing weekend.

Cartoon Time.

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