New Book: Strategy, Evolution and War
[mark safranski / “zen“]
Strategy, Evolution and War: From Apes to Artificial Intelligence by Kenneth Payne
This book by Kenneth Payne of King’s College is newly released by Georgetown Press. I saw it mainly by chance while perusing my twitter feed and ordered a copy. At first glance, it looks very promising, albeit I have a bias toward cultural evolutionary frameworks. Perhaps it will get me more up to speed on the implications of Ai for emerging warfare.
Just thumbing through, Payne has a solid bibliography and some intriguing chapter and section headings. For example:
The Hoplite Revolution:Warriors, Weapons and Society
Passionate Statesmen and Rational Bands
The Ai Renaissance ad Deep Learning
Chimps are Rational Strategists, Contra Humans
Enough to whet the appetite. May discuss Strategy, Evolution and War further after I finish it.
What have you been reading in the realm of strategy or war lately?
May 7th, 2018 at 4:41 pm
‘Warfare, State And Society In The Byzantine World’ by John Haldon
about Byzantine military logistics and civil-military relations. Remember the Star Trek episode ‘All Our Yesterdays’ with Mariette Hartley? If our sun ever went supernova the disc I would be checking out is the one that gets me be zapped back 10th century Constantinople.
May 8th, 2018 at 9:43 pm
Reading War and Peace, and it is interesting to contrast Tolstoy’s depiction of the Russian Army, its leadership, and war strategy with Clausewitz’s depiction. Tolstoy sees the war as happening as some sort of cosmic force that no once controlled, which is not really believable. Clausewitz says that Tsar Alexander consciously adopted a strategy of letting Napoleon and his Grand Armee go so far into Russia that they would burn through the capacity of the country to sustain them, thus dooming themselves. Clausewitz attributes genius and courage to the Tsar. Maybe so. There is always a tension between the two poles of individual action and initiative on one side and deep historical, economic, technological or other structural forces on the other. Both are true and actual events occur as a mix of these factors. Hence real events present extreme complexity, especially when making claims about causation. Clausewitz is a wiser thinker, though a lesser artist, and sees the balance better.
May 9th, 2018 at 2:48 am
Aexander’s personal character tended too to swing between extremes. his formative influences were his father, the Mad Tsar Paul with his paradomania fetish and hisg grandmother, Catherine the Great. A bit of a romantic and high strung man, he nevertheless was a dedicated sovereign and supreme commander fortunate in some of his generals