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I have a new post up at the closing Clausewitz Roundtable at Chicago Boyz.

Clausewitz, “On War” Book VI: The Shadow of the East

….One of the anomalies of the crusade of Napoleon’s Grande Armee into the Russia of Tsar Alexander is that the Russians began in a position of numerical inferiority, something that had not happened at any other time except during the Mongol Yoke. Even Hitler’s massive onslaught of 150 Wehrmacht divisions hurled into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in 1941 did not enjoy the advantage in numbers held by Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon’s host had an almost mythic quality, reminiscent of the army of Great King Xerxes in The Persian Wars. Historian Alan Schom writes:

“Napoleon’s mighty force was phenomenal in size and strength as it continued its advance. They were marching by the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands. It was incredible, it was fascinating, it was aew inspiring, but above all, it was terrifying. All Europe was trembling at the very thought of this massive Gallic-led horde, the likes of which had not been seen since the eighth century invasion of Europe by the Arabs and Berbers, and before that by Attila the Hun. Bavarians, Wurttemburgers, troops from Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Nassau-Aremberg, Isenburg, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Wurzberg, Saxony, Anhalt-Berburg, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Waldeck, Schaumburg-Lippe, Westphalia, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, occupied Denmark, occupied Prussia, occupied Spain and Portugal, occupied Holland, occupied Switzerland, northern Italy, the occupied Papal States, Danzig and Illyria, tiny San Marino and the miniature principality of Liechtenstein….the marched hundreds of miles, some ultimately two thousand miles, because once more Napoleon Bonaparte had refused peace, because – obsessed beyond any rational thought – he demanded war and further conquest”[1]

Tsar Alexander responded to the “Gallic horde” by trading space for time, evacuating Vitebsk and famously, Moscow, which was set to the torch. Alexander made use of the terrain, Russia’s vast and unforgiving span of earth to decimate the invaders whose lines of supply stretched vaporously thin.

Read the rest here.

The roundtable has been of superb quality and I will do a final aggregation post of the final third of the contributions once everyone has posted their concluding remarks.

Eminent British-American strategist  Colin S. Gray gambles on the Sino-American War in the 21st century (hat tip SWJ Blog)

PARAMETERS –  The 21st Century Security Environment and the Future of War

How the two great powers are going to afford to fight each other, as war would destroy their interdependent economic condition, is left unsaid. As is the rationale for fighting such a war beyond “balancing” and “fear, honor, interest” or any explanation as to why nuclear weapons would not be a constraining factor on such a war breaking out though Gray does not appear to believe that Russia and the US aspire to nuclear armageddon.

Despite some nostalgia for the the halcyon days of the Sino-Soviet alliance, an interesting an often cautionary article by a noted scholar of war.

Shortly after my previous post on the subject, the concept of warrior robots has picked up steam.

Office of Naval Research – “Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics and Design” (PDF)

The Times of London –  “Military’s Killer Robots must Learn Warrior Code”

FOXnews – “Expert: Robots Will Fight Wars of Future“

I’m as big a fan of technofuturistic science as the next reader of Danger Room but National Defense Magazine ‘s article really is breezily optimistic:

Reverse Engineering the Brain May Accelerate Robotics Research 

….Machines that walk upright will assist civilians and the military alike, said Stefan Schaal, associate professor of computer science and neuroscience at the University of Southern California.“We should at some point be able to create an artificial human being and I think humanoid robots are currently the first step toward that,” he said at the Army Science conference.“This is going to happen,” he predicted. “And it’s going to happen in this century.”It may not be as “polished” as the iRobot movie, he added.While other experts noted that there are huge technological hurdles to overcome, basic research continues on several critical technologies such as vision, movement and computational models that will allow robots to “think” like humans.A parallel effort to map – or reverse engineer – the human brain is going to give robotics experts inspiration that will allow them to create these advanced models, researchers at the conference said.The National Academy of Engineering is spearheading this “Grand Challenge.” Just as researchers successfully mapped the human genome earlier in the decade, the engineering community – not normally thought of as being a part of the life science discipline – says there will be a clear benefit to a Herculean effort to figure out exactly how the human mind works.“If we could determine the software of the human brain, we could embed all sorts of systems so as to provide human like quality for machines,” said John Parmentola, director of research and laboratory management at the Army office of the deputy assistant secretary for research and technology.Neural models will enable robots to better perceive, think, plan and act, said James Albus of the Krasnow Institute at George Mason University, Va.

“Significant economic and military applications will develop undoubtedly early in this century and in fact are already developing,” he said.
 

Read the rest here.

The part that makes me a tad skeptical is the “reverse engineering” of the brain. This is no small task. “Wetware” isn’t hardware and the wetware here is dynamically adaptive and to an extent individualized within parameters we do not yet fully understand. Unless I am missing something ( please correct me if I am) in terms of difficulty, reverse engineering the brain would appear to be harder than almost any other question that could possibly be related to the whole field of robotics itself. 

While scientists have learned more about the human brain in the last 10 years that the previous 10,000, brain science is still in it’s infancy. The exciting MRI scan studies are primarily exercises in positively identifying correlation of brain activity with specific cognitive and physical tasks; what these studies mean in terms of application requires extrapolative speculation and experimentation.

By all means guys, go for it! I’m behind the effort 100 % as the spillover benefits are going to be enormous. However, I’d wager that this strategy is not the fastest route to functionally useful, autonomously acting, robots on a societal scale.

ADDENDUM:

I just picked up P.W. Singer ‘s new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.  Flipping through it quickly, I will say this is an extremely cool book designed to appeal to war nerds, tech geeks and defense policy wonks alike ( For example, if you read Singer’s ref to “the Big Cebrowski” and get it, well, then this book is for you). Some well known figures in the blogosphere also make it into Singer’s book but to find out who, you’ll have to go get a copy. 🙂

ADDENDUM II. 

Jeff Hawkins at TED.com on the revolutionary potential of brain science:

Thought I would catch-up to the excellent work of my fellow participants at The Clausewitz Roundtable at Chicago Boyz.  First though, I’d like to say “thank you” to Ron Coleman for linking to my most recent post at the roundtable at Dean’s World and at his own blog, Likelihood of Success. Much appreciated!

The Roundtable continues….

Book III

Sam Liles – Clausewitz, On War Book 3: A consideration of cyber strategy

Matthew Borton – Clausewitz, On War, Book 3: The Shape of a Strategic Force.

seydlitz89 – Carl von Clausewitz, Book III, General Comments

josephfouche – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Painting by Numbers

Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: The Substance of Strategy

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Factors to Be Considered in Making and Executing Strategy

Cheryl Rofer – Clausewitz, On War: Book 3: Boldness

Kotare – Clausewitz, “On War”, Book 3: the Prussian as prophet

Zenpundit – Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Calculation

Book IV.

Matthew Borton – Clausewitz Book IV: Still Relevant.

seydlitz89 – Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book IV (and VI): Contingency  and Carl von Clausewitz: Book IV, Some Comments

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book IV: The Rise and Fall of Battle

Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book IV: Attrition Writ Large

Kotare – Clausewitz, “On War”, Book 4: keep it simple stupid

Book V.

Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book V: Jointness à la Carl

josephfouche – Clausewitz, On War, Book V: Freedom is Worth the Mass

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, Book V: Military Forces (Circa 1830)

Book VI.

Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book VI: The Best Defense is a Good Offense