zenpundit.com

John Boyd used to preach that “Machines don’t fight wars, people do and they use their minds!”. Which is of course true but sometimes they use their minds to make new machines or use old ones in a novel way. So, as a counterbalance to the frequent discussions here of 4GW, COIN and the mental and moral levels of war, how about some computer wizardry as a change of pace? LOL!

About the Technology in Wartime Conference

“This conference will explore how computer technology is used during war — both for the purposes of combat/defense, as well as for human rights interventions into war-torn regions. Topics will include high tech weapons systems, cyberwarfare, autonomous aircraft, mobile robots, internet surveillance, anonymous communication, and privacy-enhancing technologies that aid human rights workers documenting conditions in war-torn countries and help soldiers communicate their experiences in blogs and e-mail.

Our goal will be to consider the ethical implications of wartime technologies and how these technologies are likely to affect civilization in years to come. Ultimately we want to engage a pressing question of our time: What should socially-responsible computer professionals do in a time of high tech warfare?

The proceedings will be broadcast live on the Web, and the presentations collected in book form online, released under a CC license, and made available to the public and policy makers looking for expert opinions on wartime technology issues during the election year”

Joi Ito is one of the sponsors and the list of confirmed speakers includes Noah Schachtman of WIRED and Bruce Schneier . They could use a few more warriors in their geek and academic heavy mix but it looks like it’s shaping up to be an excellent conference.

Hat tip to Charles Cameron.

Abu Muqawama – “LTC John Nagl to retire”

Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Flunk the SysAdmin, lose the Leviathan”

The Washington Monthly -“The Army’s Other Crisis: Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving”

I enjoyed reading and was impressed by LTC John Nagl’s Learning How To Eat Soup With A Knife and I heartily recommend it. I have no doubt that he has been given a better offer – probably a much better offer financially and one more in line with his demonstrated abilities – than rolling the dice and sticking with a career in the “up or out” U.S. Army.  I’m also certain that Col. Nagl will be contributing to the war of ideas long after he ceases to be a uniformed part of the war and that Nagl probably made the best decision possible for himself and his family. Anyone who believes that a post-Iraq U.S. Army won’t restructure itself by downsizing it’s most talented warfighters in favor of career desk jockeys simply wasn’t paying attention during the 1990’s.

As the links demonstrate, Nagl is merely the well-known face of an ominous trend. When an institution – be it military, educational, corporate, civic, religious – reaches a point where it is merely a farm team that regularly sends it’s best and it’s brightest elsewhere then it is an institution on it’s way out. There is something worse than “breaking the Army”; broken armies get rebuilt because restoring them to health is a national priority. No, the real danger for the U.S. military is an Army that “embraces mediocrity” because if mediocrity becomes entrenched it will not be removed by anything shy of a near-total housecleaning of the general officers. Can you see America’s “no-accountability” Boomer elite doing that ? Or even recognizing if it needed to be done?

I can’t.

ADDENDUM:

Fabius Maximus -“Recommended reading: transforming the Army, the hard way” and “The Army is losing good people. That is only a symptom of a more serious problem.”

Intel Dump -“John Nagl has left the building”

SWJ Blog – “Nagl to Leave Army”

Kings of War – “High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank”

Neptunus Lex -“Brain drain?”

Armchair Generalist – “Nagl Leaving the Army“

Cheryl “CKR” Rofer of Whirledview, who initiated the Nuclear Policy “Blog Tank” challenge, skillfully brought the series to a summative conclusion with a second round-up and then a consensus post. I’d like to take a moment to look at both posts by CKR:

“The Bloggers Develop Nuclear Weapons Policy – Pulling It Together”

“The Bloggers Develop Nuclear Weapons Policy – The Consensus Statement”

While I have previously linked to the contributions from Dave Schuler and Charles Cameron, Cheryl’s first post above featured several other bloggers to whom I would like to draw attention with a brief excerpt:

Cernig – “America’s Nuclear Policy

“I’ve written before that trying to apply the Cold War assumptions of nuclear retaliation to assymetrical stateless actors is like running with nuclear scissors. it’s far more likely that you’ll fall and injure yourself or some innocent in a messy way than accidentally stab the one murderer in a crowd.

Jason suggests a posture based around a minimum deterrent force, I assume involving only a couple of hundred warheads, “prioritizing deployment on submarines which are impervious to any comprehensive first strike or pre-emptive attack.” I think that’s a good first step but would then move on to a “Virtual Swords” concept as explained by Jeffrey Lewis. Dr Lewis quotes an article from a friend of his which notes this isn’t a new idea”

PoliGazette – “Of Linus and Nuclear Weapons”

“So the fundamental question that must begin the debate over a post-Cold War nuclear weapons policy in the U.S. is: Can nuclear weapons enhance U.S. security, and if so, how? General Lee Butler, retired former commander of the United States’ nuclear weapons forces, has a surprising answer: Nuclear weapons in actuality provide very limited contributions to U.S. national security. The reason is that nuclear weapons are politically and militarily virtually unusable.”

Wampum – “Packages and Packaging”

“First, the point made by John Kerry in 2004 remains — the greatest threat to the United States (as well as Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Europe, Canada, and the Russian Federation) is the risk that the existing stockpiles of devices and fissile materials will eventually be re-purposed, and the better policy is to allocate resources nominally reducing that risk model, up to and including unilateral partial disarmament. The alternative “single weapon” risk model was articulated in the same debate by George W. Bush, and independently by Peter Daou’s sometime employers, Mssrs. Ted Turner, Sam Nunn, Warren Buffett and others, and without loss of generality, by the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator proponents.

Restated, the greatest quantifiable risk has no agency, and cannot be “deterred” or engaged in human discourse. It is rust. Sensor failure. False alarm. The next greatest quantifiable risk has agency, but also cannot be “deterred” or engaged in political discourse. It is covert or overt expropriation of devices or fissiles. Restated, it is sensor and inventory control failure”

 Rofer did an excellent job summing up the consensus points in a discussion of nuclear weapons policy that featured bloggers with a wide spread of political and philosophical positions:

“Overview
The bloggers who have contributed to this blog-tank range in views across the center of the political and hawkishness spectra. Nonetheless, we have achieved a fair degree of consensus.

Nuclear weapons strategy is part of a broader US military and international relations strategy, but it can be discussed by itself. To some degree, development of all these levels of strategy is iterative.

We need to identify short-term and long-term goals and give each its appropriate place. While abolition of nuclear weapons may be a long-term goal, making it too immediate can be counterproductive.

Nuclear weapons have a paradoxical relationship to power. They cannot be used, but their threat is potent. If a nation is tied too closely to a requirement to retaliate, its options may in fact be limited.

Nations that have nuclear weapons want to preserve their exclusivity, but that desire may increase the valuation of nuclear weapons by other nations.”

Read the rest here.

A further comment, on Cheryl’s “Blog Tank” concept. Her format was important in its’ own right:

 This experience is one that bears repeating; and similar things have been called for by others, notably Michael Tanji who is part of the effort by Threatswatch.org to become a “Think Tank 2.0“. The blogosphere, for it’s many faults and idiosyncratic subculture, has matured to the point that there are enough experts and gifted amateurs that a person could probably organize an impressive intellectual “swarm” on nearly any topic under the sun in fairly short order. Just by asking folks of intelligence and goodwill to help.

To paraphrase an old revolutionary, brainpower is lying in the streets for the taking.

I’m pleased to offer a different perspective here from blogfriend Charles Cameron of Hipbone Games who blogs at Forensic Theology. Charles has a deep academic background in comparative theological studies and he is offering insight into the mindset of millenarian religious radicals and what their motivations might mean for the concept of nuclear deterrence.  Cameron seeks to address an aspect that is, surprisingly, seldom highlighted properly in the media despite the U.S. having been at war with Islamist terrorists since 2001. The number of voices who have also tried to do so – Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, Tim Furnish and Michael Scheuer – have focused exclusively on radical Salafist and Mahdist Islamism while Cameron puts these in context  with all eschatological religious extremists, mythic archetypes and other primal currents of human culture.

Charles Cameron’s post is really an 18 page paper of considerable intellectual depth and subtlety and I offer it here to readers with a strong endorsement for your careful consideration.

“Religious and apocalyptic background to nuclear policy making”

“I read about Cheryl Rofer’s invitation to the blogosphere of 18 December, suggesting that we should form a “blog-tank” on nuclear policy, on my blog-friend Zenpundit’s blog. My purpose here is to offer as background to that ongoing discussion of nuclear policy, some reminders from the spheres of religion and mythology.

It is my purpose here to suggest that the actions, plans and motives of those who are subject to religious drivers, and in particular drivers of an apocalyptic or “end times” nature, are, by reason of their seeming irrationality and fringe quality, often overlooked by those whose specialties revolve around such things as centrifuges and the enrichment of uranium, short-range missiles and their forward deployment, and so forth – and that a theological understanding of the place of nuclear weapons in the eschatological thinking of radical religionists of a variety of stripes is one of the key desiderata in an effort to come to grips with the realities of proliferation and peace”.

Read the rest here (PDF)

Cheryl Rofer summarizes and synthesizes the nuclear policy ” blog tank” for “Round 1“. This is an excellent way to get the overall thrust of the debate in a single post including the contributions of a few bloggers that I did not catch the first time around.