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Top Billing! CTlab Symposium on P.W. Singer’s Wired For War

CTlab Symposium: Wired for War, additional readings 

Opening Remarks  P.W. Singer

Whither the Anti-Killer Robot Lobby?  Charli Carpenter

Wired for … Nuclear War?  Martin Senn

Studying War on an Infinite Battlefield  Drew Conway

More Thoughts On Robots and IHL  Rex Brynen

When Robots Are Not Just About Autonomy – Remote Platform Targeted Killing  Kenneth Anderson

Implications for command and control  Antoine Bousquet

Provocation: Wiring Terrorist Sanctuaries  Mike Innes

Brave New World?  John Matthew Barlow

Harvard KSG on ‘Unmanned and Robotic Warfare’  Drew Conway

Kudos to Mike Innes and CTLab Review for organizing this symposium on Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, which has an impressive roster of scholars, bloggers and the author Peter Singer participating. I just began reading Wired for War last night and it is excellent, the must read “future of warfare”book for 2009.

(I am however, disturbed by the frequency of pop cultural references from my youth in Wired for War, which, if read in a tome on modern warfare, presents the reader with the inescapable conclusion that they are getting….old)

The New York Times –  The Civil Heretic

This portrait of Freeman Dyson, one of the more important living scientific minds, and his ostracism at the hands of the global warming commissars in academia who brook no dissent from the party line, is one of the best NYT pieces I’ve seen in a while.

Scientific American – Building the 21st-Century Mind

The Rise of the Synthesizers. I have some problems with Howard Gardner, which range from his eschewing scientific rigor in investigating learning theories whenever it suits his political views to do so, to writing books that are, at best, unevenly developed arguments. That said, Gardner always has several important, worthwhile and often powerful concepts or insights amidst the other clutter he’s presenting. This is no exception. Accept the wheat, discard the chaff.

CTOvision – Widespread Cyber Espionage: More evidence and what to do about it

I will pair this with Michael Tanji’s Stop Reading About Cyber Security and Sam Liles’ Into the darkness of cyber warfare

Haft of the Spear – Everyone is an analyst

A quality rant that includes -and I quote – “. . . there are not enough short buses in this world to transport these people to crazy town.” Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!

Sic Semper Tyrannis – A good plan for Afghanistan… and Bob Gates on FNS – Yes, that’s what we are doing.

Have not checked in with the curmudgeonly and paleoconservative Col. Lang in a while. : )

Mapping Strategy – ‘Planning’ in Fog at High Speed

Art is my metacognitive amigo.

Dr. Von – Dispelling a Myth – Public Schools do Better in Math than Private

I am not surprised, statistically speaking, that any study that was constructed adequately so as to compare students on an apples to apples basis would demonstrate these findings. Once you control for intellectual selectivity, or at times, just basic socioeconomic level, the private advantage is lost (Harvard with open admissions would no longer be Harvard, in essence)

Recommended Viewing:

Hat tip to Network Weaving:

That’s it!

Top Blling! Dr. Steven Metz at SWJ Blog – Trends, Threats, and Expectations

Big Steve sets off a robust discussion after his participation in a Pentagon conference on strategic futurism and a SWJ Blog post.

Chicago Boyz (David Foster) – Indoctrination at U-Delaware

The heavy, taxpayer-subsidized, propaganda hand of the multiculturalist-critical race theorist Left at the University of Delaware.

FT.com – China calls for new reserve currency

I see this more of serious signal to the American elite from their nervous Chinese counterparts that the moves by the Fed to counter a deflationary spiral by running the printing press are viewed in Beijing as a serious threat to Chinese national interests. In a world of fiat currencies, a “supra-fiat currency” backed by the IMF that depends heavily on the U.S. is a hollow threat to the dollar except as a technical toy for tweaking currency fluctuations. The IMF has no economy, no vital resources, no global stockpile of gold and no ability to project military power to back such a supra-currency and give the paper value. The dollar only matters because of global faith in the power and standing of the United States – a quality swiftly being discounted due to the policies of Bernancke and the Obama administration.

Other views on this or a related topic: John Robb , The Newshoggers.com  , naked capitalism  , The Moderate Voice ( Ironically, I checked out sites by actual economists tonight, including Brad DeLong and they didn’t have anything up on this yet. Weird. Kinda like me ignoring a new war)

Fabius Maximus – All you need to know about Ayn Rand, savior of modern conservatism

FM opens up a can of worms by posting on radical free marketerr philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, who in point of fact bitterly repudiated conservativism  (William F. Buckley and Whittaker Chambers returned the compliment by savaging Rand in a hysterical review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review). Interestingly, some of FM’s anti-Rand commenters link Atlas Shrugged with The Lord of the Rings. Amusingly, they are correct in the sense that both J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayn Rand were believers in the rebirth of the romantic epic.

Soob – Mexico’s Middle Class Head North

A really bad sign. Which makes me wonder in another domain if capital flight from the U.S. has begun yet?

Red Team Journal (Elkus) – Military Futurism

Heavy on the Futurism aspect.

CTLab Review – CTlab Symposium on P.W. Singer’s Wired For War

This is great! I have a copy of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
but I doubt I will get it read in time. Here’s the details:

CTlab’s second symposium in its 2009 series starts next week, on Monday, 30 March, and will run for four days, until 2 April (or until participants run out of steam, which might take longer). The subject: Peter Singer’s new book, Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and  Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin Press: 2009).

This is going to be an exciting booklab, on a work that’s been getting broad exposure, in an out of the blogosphere. Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy, and Director of its 21st Century Defense Initiative, will be participating on day 1. Proceedings will be compiled and indexed on a separate page for ease of reference, here.

Confirmed participants include:

• Kenneth Anderson (Law; American University)
• Matt Armstrong (Public Diplomacy; Armstrong Strategic Insights Group)
• John Matthew Barlow (History; John Abbott College)
• Rex Brynen (Political Science; McGill University)
• Antoine Bousquet (International Relations; Birkbeck College, London)
• Charli Carpenter (International Relations; UMass-Amherst)
• Andrew Conway (Political Science; NYU)
• Jan Federowicz (History; Carleton University)
• John T. Fishel (National Security Policy; University of Oklahoma)
• Michael A. Innes (Political Science; University College London)
• Martin Senn (Political Science; University of Innsbruck)
• Marc Tyrrell (Anthropology; Carleton University)

That’s it!

Here ya go…..

Top Billing! Clay Shirky – Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

This post made a HUGE impact on the journalism and tech blogospheres. It’s quite good.

Fabius Maximus – A solution to 4GW – the introduction

A robust discussion of 4GW by FM, including a large number of comments on the post including those by Col. GI Wison and Dr. Chet Richards.

DNI – Watch ADM on BookTV

Boyd acolytes and military reformers Tom Christie, Winslow Wheeler and Pierre Sprey discuss America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress which was re-issued under the prestigious brand of Stanford University Press.

ICSR – Countering Online Radicalisation: A Strategy for Action (PDF)

Nick Carr – Realtime kills real space

The asocial shift of mobile social media technology.

SWJ Blog – Special Warfare – 1962

A little military history in a primary source doc

John Hagel – With Liberty and Talent for All

Hagel is always good.

That’s it!

I feel this one will be a weird mix.

Top Billing! Col. Dr. Kilcullen vs. Col. Dr. Bacevich over Dave Kilcullen’s new book,  The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Dual hat tip SWJ Blog and BJ at Newshoggers.com).

Bacevich Review: Raising Jihad .  Killcullen Rebuttal: Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning

I have not read Accidental Guerilla yet but it seems obvious that Andrew Bacevich begins from a position longstanding and very strong, non-interventionist, anti-COIN, pro- “Big Army/Near Peer Competitior” policy views. I suspect that may have influenced his take on Dave’s argument just a bit, thus leading to Dave to speculate that Bacevich may have not read the final book or read it in full. A possibility; about 80% of the books I review here are advance copies sent by publishers, authors or their agents.

Outside the Beltway ( Dave Schuler) – Negotiating With Iran

Dave’s reasoned and reasonable take on the Obama administration’s opening moves with Iran.

Coming Anarchy – Financial Warfare and Idea: The Dictionary of Modern Ideas

Liked both of these posts – phrase of the day – “argotic arms race”.

Two for One:  Whirledview (CKR) – Diplomacy Is Not What Bush Did  and Duck of Minerva (Nexon) – Haven’t they Filled the Protocol Positions Yet?

This post by Cheryl is a lucid counterpoint to my knock on Obama administration stumbles in foreign policy while subsequent events have caused Dr. Dan to move in my direction on this score.

Threatswatch.org ( Elkus, Tanji) – Legacy Futures in Cyberspace and Brave Digital World 

A cyberspecial.

Tom Barnett is on C-Span in a few hours.

John Robb indulges his dark side.

Open the Future – The End of Long-Term Thinking

A good example from Jamais on how words frame analytical thought.

NewsDaily – Who got AIG’s bailout billions?

Primarily the Brits, French and Germans it turns out – the same folks who were loudly blaming the crisis on American capitalism in public had the weaker and more poorly managed financial systems, despite heavy state regulation, and were taking enormous handouts from U.S. taxpayers in private.

Scientific American – Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain

SEED – Adapting to a New Economy , A Hormone to Remember and Is MIT Obsolete?

WSJ – Philanthropy and Its Enemies  (Hat tip to Instapundit and Steve Schippert)

A united Hard Left and multiculturalist Race Hustling attempt at extortion and hijacking of private foundation endowments to advance political causes of the Left through a blandly named front group that is led by extremist antiglobalization activists like Christine Ahn and “social justice” organizers such as Judy Hatcher. Ironically, most of the major philanthropic foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur are pretty liberal in their orientation and grant giving but in the perspective of these folks, “liberal” is another name for right-wing, capitalist, crypto-patriarchy. People like this are why David Horowitz never lacks for material.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:

Evan Williams on Twitter’s user-driven evolution…..

Humor, a take on an old optical illusion ( hat tip Dave of Thoughts Illustrated)

Top Billing! Dave Dilegge at SWJ – Thoughts on the “New Media”

Quite a collection that Dave has compiled on the role Web 2.0/New media have “revolutionized” the “lessons learned” process for the U.S. military, featuring commentary from Spencer Ackerman, Tom Barnett, Janine Davidson, Andrew Exum, Grim, Judah Grunstein, Dave Kilcullen, Raymond Pritchett, Mark Safranski, Herschel Smith, Starbuck, Michael Tanji, and Michael Yon. An honor for me to be included in such a group. 

UPDATED !!: As many people read this post on Monday rather than Sunday, I am adding a few more items:

Whirledview (CKR ) –  Great Powers

Red Herrings – the bookshelf: great powers by thomas p.m. barnett

Reviews of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush by two blogfriends and co-authors who differ on the merits of Tom’s work. Cheryl is the more critical and likes certain aspects or concepts much more than the overall book. Adrian calls the book ” Outstanding” but takes great issue with the title itself.

MountainRunner – It is time to create a center for public diplomacy discourse and research  and PD20.org  and Comparing the Areas of Responsibility of State and Defense (Updated)

 Matt Armstrong’s efforts to upgrade the status and practice of public diplomacy – as well as to drag it into the 21st century – have been sustained and increasingly impressive. For all the complaining about bloggers just talking, Matt is an example of making the jump to real world action, from educating the media and members of Congress about Smith-Mundt to the recent White Oak Recommendations. I’m certain that PD2O.org will become, in time, the Small Wars Journal of public diplomacy, as Matt intends. And I will be an early member there, when the forum opens, just as I was at the SWC. I encourage you to be there as well and turbo-charge the launch.

Project White Horse – RC#25 Resilient Communities and Actionable Intelligence (Part 1) 

I should have brought this forum to the attention of readers earlier when I was first contacted by Ed Beakley of Project White Horse, unfortunately I was totally buried at the time at work, school,  and with side projects and I never attended to it. Some important thinkers are involved in the discussions there on resilient communities and related subjects, including Col. GI Wilson, Lt. John Sullivan, Fabius Maximus and senior officers from several militaries.

Opposed Systems Design – Biddle on Future Warfare

Dr. Steven Biddle, who was in discussion with Col. TX Hammes, comes out in favor of Frank Hoffman’s “Hybrid War” scenario as a basis for planning assumptions.

Zero Intelligence Agents – Networks and ‘Implication for Network Centric Warfare’

Drew Conway on the further evolution of the Big Cebrowski’s theoretical legacy in a paper by Dr. Jessica Glicken Turnley on NCW.

Futurejacked – The Elites Must Be Brain Dead

A very intriguing story from the perspective of societal legitimacy and elite behavior.

Don Vandergriff – On linear Education by Gary Gagliardi of The Science of Strategy Institute

I disagree with some of Gary’s characterization of Dewey but his larger point regarding linearity in publlic education is correct. If anything, he could have expanded further.

Historyguy99 – Afghanistan and Failed States

On failed state repair moreso than Afghanistan, whose natural condition is a weak, legitimist, Pushtun state and the inhabitants like it that way. We should have just restored  Zahir Shah.

NewScientist.com – Did aversion to bitter tastes evolve into moral disgust?

A little Ev-psych.

That’s it !