Review of Wired for War
My review of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century is now up at The American Conservative.
Key excerpt:
Unfortunately, too many of Wired for War’s human characters seem to have fallen into the trap of seeking to substitute technical solutions for problems of war that are fundamentally political or strategic in nature. Singer quotes Noah Shachtman fretting that excessive use of unmanned systems “makes us look like the Evil Empire [from Star Wars] and the other guys like the Rebel Alliance, defending themselves versus robot invaders.”
True, perhaps. Yet surely human invaders are just as unwelcome as robotic ones. American Predator airstrikes are unpopular in Pakistan not because the planes doing the bombing are unmanned, but because no country likes to see another country dropping bombs within its territory.
A great nation requires capable armed forces. And that, in turn, requires a military equipped with up-to-date technology. But no amount of technology is a substitute for sound strategy. Warring automatons, no matter how ingenious, cannot save a nation that squanders its wealth on foreign misadventures and risks undermining the economic foundations that support its military establishment by throwing ever more money at defense contractors rather than productive investments in domestic infrastructure and private business.
This book is almost certainly the first time that a Brookings Institution scholar has used the term “frak” in print. But with luck, it won’t be the last. So say we all.
21 Responses to “Review of Wired for War”
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April 6th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Matt, you did it again with the italics. Argh! My eyes! If you can’t trust a professional blogger to close a simple HTML tag, who can you trust!
April 6th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Never mind…I see he fixed it now. Carry on with the substantive conversation.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
By my grey hairs, looking at the cover illustration, I think that the pathetically immature neocons who were bullied in high school will be delighted at a chance to give our advseraries a wedgie.
Substantive conversation ? anyone ? Bueler ?
April 6th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
What happens when the vast majority of our military are robots controlled by people in suburban Florida rather than the flesh-and-blood soldiers our country claims to care about? I hope we don’t become even more willing to commit military force.
And the people who make these death machines swear they are only for foreign use. Nice thought, but when sherrifs here in America are buying armored personnel carriers with .50 caliber machine guns*, I’ll take that with a grain of salt.
Michigan State by 5.
*the guy who considered arresting Michael Phelps, for instance.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Yes, but it takes a LOT of money to make a robotic warrior.
Whereas humans will reproduce for free.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Well now there is a reason to read The American Conservative other than Steve Sailor’s movie reviews.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I must say that, as a pretty liberal guy, I’ve found TAC to be just about the best website there is if you want to read smart articles written by intelligent people who honestly disagree with you and are serious about proving their point. If Ann Coulter says something I don’t understand, I don’t think twice, but if Daniel Larison says something I don’t understand, I really wanna know what I’m not getting.
It’s worth nothing that someone who’s nominally pretty lefty like Matt has a take on military robots that’s essentially harmonious to many crunchy-con types like Andrew Bacevich, and that there really are a lot of people on the right, particularly after the Bush years, who are interested in reducing the size and scope of the military.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
‘Well now there is a reason to read The American Conservative other than Steve Sailor’s movie reviews.’
You need to read Daniel Larison. Actually I like most of their bloggers.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
is now up at The American Conservative.
===========================================================
And you haven’t gone up in a puff of smoke??
April 6th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Yet surely human invaders are just as unwelcome as robotic ones.
More so because, unlike the drone aircraft, human invaders often rape and torture the local population.
But Schactman’s point isn’t that it will make us look bad to the locals being bombed, it’s that it will make us look bad, or at least cowardly and bullying, to the rest of the world.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Yes, but it takes a LOT of money to make a robotic warrior.
About $6 million(in 1977 dollars, that is).
And, of course, 50 years after the war ends you’re not still paying disability and pension benefits to wounded robotic warriors…..
April 6th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
There is a scene in that book where a robot with a mini gun was being displayed for a crowd of defense contractors and it didn’t do what it was supposed to do when it got out of range of it’s controller, it turned and attempted to blast the hell out of the audience. If the thing was loaded it would have been the scene out of robocop.
April 6th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I hate the term “kudos,” but if I didn’t I’d use it to commend both Matt and The American Conservative (one of the few rightwing sites that has a brain, as far as I can tell) for this collaboration.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I like the American Conservative as well. Pat Buchanan ripped the Neocons a new asshole back in early 2003 at a time when many on the left were drinking Kenneth Pollack’s Kool-Aid.
April 7th, 2009 at 6:07 am
It’s a moral question, not a strategic one. The less skin we have in the game, and the easier it is to lay waste to opponents without taking any human damage ourselves, the more easily we will be seduced into using that power. Long-distance weaponry, from spears to rockets, have always made it easier for us to be more savage while posturing our mythical moral superiority. A reliance on video-game warring will really take away what’s left of our souls.
April 7th, 2009 at 6:49 am
I agree about TAC – it’s come up with a lot of well reasoned articles in the last couple years about Iraq, Iran, etc.
Pat Buchanan may come across as a right wing nut on TV, but in print he comes across as definitely not an idiot. I’m not usually in agreement with him, but when he opposes attacks on Iran and the like, it’s hard to disagree with him.
Meanwhile, SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS!
According to a leaked copy of the script for Terminator’s final episode this week (and it’s not just a season finale, it’s a series finale because the show is doomed), Cameron goes out in a blaze of glory, taking down multiple T-888’s and humans in the process of blowing up the REAL Skynet.
And, yes, she dies (if you can call a robot being blown in half “dying”).
Although the final scene shows her returning in the future, coming out of a time bubble – NAKED!
The leaked script hasn’t been denied by Fox as legit, although a couple of the writers seem to be claiming so via Twitter feeds.
We’ll see in four days.
April 7th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Ah, I see why Richard like the show. There are not many venues offering Transhumanist porn. heh heh
Plus that Blade Runner VHS tape is getting kinda ..er.. shopworn.
April 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Richard, did you see the report than fox is “leaning” toward season 2 dollhouse? The show keeps getting better, although I’m still not THAT into it. But I think if Joss gets a second season to work with it could become very interesting. Who knows, maybe Summer Glau could be a new Doll.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:47 am
If the soldiers are robots, the public might find it easier to start wars.
On the plus side, if all the veterans are robots, the public might find it easier to abandon wars as well. Detachment has its advantages.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The Dollhouse report was dismissed by the guys over at TV By The Numbers. Unless Dollhouse trends up over the rest of its episodes, it’s as done for as TSCC.
Too bad, since the concept has promise. And the babes are hot.