zenpundit.com

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“]

My reading at CNAS, which had once been frequent, declined with the waning of the Abu Muqawama blog. While formerly I usually scanned through CNAS reports on a regular basis after reading what Exum and his commenters had to say, toward the end I only visited when Adam and Dan had new posts up.

At the gentle nudging of Frank Hoffman, I decided to read the latest CNAS product;  I’m pleased to say with the release of ” 20YY:Preparing for War in the Robotic Age“ by Robert Work ( CNAS CEO and former Undersecretary of the Navy) and Shawn Brimley (CNAS Executive V.P. and former NSC Strategic Planning Director) CNAS has rolled out an intellectually provocative analysis on an important emerging aspect of modern warfare.

Work and Brimley have done a number of things well and did them concisely (only 36 pages) in “20YY”:

• A readable summary of the technological evolution of modern warfare in the past half century while distinguishing between military revolutions,  military-technical revolution and the the 80’s-90’s  American “revolution in military affairs“.
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• A more specific drill-down on the history of guided munitions and their game-changing importance on the relationship between offense and defense that flourished after the Gulf War. 
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• An argument that the proliferation of technology and information power into the hands unfriendly states and non-state actors is altering the strategic environment for the United States, writing:
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• “Meanwhile in the 13 years since the last 20XX game, foreign nation-state C41, surveillance and reconaissance systems, and guided munitions-battle network capabilities have become increasingly capable.  Indeed, these systems now form the very robust and advanced “anti-access and area denial”  (A2/AD) capabilities envisioned in the 20XX game series. The effect has been that the dominance enjoyed by the United States in the late 1990’s/2000’s in the area of high end sensors, guided weaponry, space and cyberspace systems and stealth technology has started to erode. Moreover the erosion is now occurring at an accelerated rate.”
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• Positing the near-future global proliferation of unmanned, autonomous, networked and swarmed robotic systems replacing( and leveraged by diminishing numbers of) expensive manpower and piloted platforms on the battlefield and altering the age-old relationship between a nation’s population base and the traditional calculation of its potential military power.
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• An argument that “warfare in the robotic age” will mean substantial to fundamental shifts in strategic calculation of deterrence, coercion, the use of force, operational doctrines and the evolution of military technology and that the United States must prepare for this eventuality.

This report is well worth reading.  In my view there are some areas that require further exploration and debate than can be found in “20YY”. For example:

• While the power of economics as a driver of unmanned, autonomous weapons is present, the implications are vastly understated. Every nation will face strategic investment choices between opting for simple and cheaper robotic platforms in mass and “pricing out” potential rivals by opting for “class” – fewer but more powerful, sophisticated and versatile robotic systems.
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• The scale of robot swarms are limited primarily by computing power and cost of manufactureand could be composed of robots from the size of a fly to that of a zeppelin. As John Robb has noted, this could mean billions of drones.
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• The US defense acquisition system and the armed services are ill-suited for fast and inexpensive introduction of robotic warfare technology – particularly if they threaten to displace profitable legacy platforms – as was demonstrated by the CIA rather than the USAF taking the lead on building a drone fleet.  Once foreign states reach parity, they may soon exceed us technologically in this area. A future presidential candidate may someday warn of  a growing ” robot gap” with China.
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• Reliance on robotic systems as the center of gravity of your military power carries a terrific risk if effective countermeasures suddenly render them useless at the worst possible time (“Our…our drone swarm….they’ve turned around…they are attacking our own troops….Aaaaahhhh!”)
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• The use of robotic systems to indiscriminately and autonomously kill is virtually inevitable much like terrorism is inevitable. As with WMD, the weaker the enemy, the less moral scruple they are likely to have in employing lethal robotic technology.
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• For that matter, the use of robotic systems by an authoritarian state against its own citizens to suppress insurgency, peaceful protest or engage in genocide against minority groups is also highly probable. Is there much doubt how the Kim Family regime in north Korea or Assad in Syria would make use of an army of “killer robots” if they feel their hold on power was threatened?
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• International Law is not currently configured for genuinely autonomous weapons with Ai operating systems. Most of the theorists and certainly the activists on the subject of  “killer robots” are more interested in waging lawfare exclusively against American possession and use of such weapons than in stopping their proliferation to authoritarian regimes or contracting realistic covenants as to their use.

All in all “20YY:Preparing for War in the Robotic Age provides much food for thought.

[ by Charles Cameron — more food for thought — same article, different topic ]
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Here’s the part of the conversation where we hear about the Mahdi. IMO, it’s well worth your time to read it… the first part is more serious, the second part more light hearted.

Now it was Abu Hassar who laughed right in my face. “For your government, it’s no worse a position than the one they’re in now. We used to be friends, remember, in Afghanistan, in the ‘80s. If we went from being allies to enemies that means we can go from being enemies to allies.”

“Okay, so how does that end?” I asked. “My government arms the Islamists. Tell me how that ends?”

“You really want to know?”

I nodded.

“The Prophet predicted all this,” began Abu Hassar, speaking as if from some place of deep personal knowledge. “He said it begins with the boys, writing and speaking messages of a new future in the streets.” Abu Hassar stopped and looked at Abed for a moment. In that look, it seemed Abed and the democratic activists of 2011 were the boys Abu Hassar was speaking about. “The messages spread, breeding outrage and a war fought by the men. This is what we see now. In that war, an Islamist Army rises, uniting to destroy all others. Then a tyrant is killed. This is Assad. His army will fall. Afterwards, among the Islamists, there will be many pretenders. The fighting among them will go on.”

Abu Hassar looked down at my notepad. I hadn’t been writing anything down. This seemed to bother him. “You know all this?” he asked.

“It’s all happening right now,” I said. “The infighting, the rise of the Islamists, how does that end?”

“The Syrian people thirst for an Islamic State,” said Abu Hassar. “After so much war, they want justice. After Assad falls and when there is fighting among the pretenders, a man will come. He is a common man, but he will have a vision. In that vision, God will tell him how to destroy His enemies and bring peace to all peoples. That man is the Mahdi.”

I wrote down the word: Mahdi, a heavy and dissatisfied dot above the ‘i’.

“You don’t believe me?” said Abu Hassar.

I stared back at him, saying nothing.

“You think as poorly armed as we are, we can’t defeat Assad and his backers?”

“It’s not that,” I said.

Abu Hassar continued: “Our weapons don’t matter as much as you think. Even Albert Einstein predicted what’s happening now. He said that the Third War would be a nuclear war, but that the Fourth War would be fought with sticks and stones. That’s how we beat you in Iraq, with sticks and stones. Whether we are helped or not, this is how we will create our Islamic State even with the super powers of the world against us.”

“So the plan is to wait for the Mahdi?”

“He walks among us now, a simple man of the people, the true redeemer.”

I shut my notebook. Our waiter was lurking across the room. I caught his eye and made a motion with my hand, as if I were scribbling out the bill for our lunch. He disappeared into the back of the restaurant.

“What will you do if this is true?” Abu Hassar asked me.

“If the Mahdi comes?”

He nodded.

“That means there will be a peaceful and just Islamic State?”

Again, he nodded.

“Then I’ll come visit you with my family.”

“And you will be welcome,” said Abu Hassar, grinning his wide ear-to-ear grin and resting his heavy hand on my shoulder.

We’d been sitting for hours, and it was early afternoon. Abu Hassar excused himself to take the day’s fourth prayer in a quite corner of the restaurant. Abed, seemingly exhausted from translating, stood stiffly and went to use the bathroom. I sat by myself, the empty plates of our lunch spread in front of me.

“Syrie?” he asked, pointing to where Abu Hassar and Abed had been sitting.

I nodded.

Our waiter pointed to where Abu Hassar had been sitting. He stroked his face as if he had a thick and imaginary beard, one like Abu Hassar’s. “Jabhat al-Nusra,” he said.

I shrugged.

“Amerikee?” he asked, pointing at me, seemingly confused as to why an American would spend so much time sitting with two Syrians, especially one Islamist.

“New York,” I said.

He shook his head knowingly, as if to intone the word ‘New York,’ were to intone a universal spirit of ‘anything goes’.

I handed over the money for lunch. Abed and Abu Hassar returned and we left the restaurant. Outside the gray morning rain was now gray afternoon rain. The cafés were still full of people sitting on green Astroturf lawns, sipping tea that steamed at their lips. Nothing had changed.

We piled into the black Peugeot and returned to the road. For a while, we didn’t speak. We were tired of our own voices. There was just the noise of the broken wiper in front of me, stuttering across the windshield. Above us, the overcast sky lost its light. Below, Akçakale camp spread in all directions, as gray as a second sky. Something heavy and sad came over Abu Hassar and the heaviness of that thing came over me. He and I had spent the day somewhere else, in a different time. Now he’d go back to the camp and I’d go back to the road.

But we weren’t there yet. With about a mile left to go, Abu Hassar put his hand on my shoulder. “So you will come visit when the war is over?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “If it’s safe for someone like me.”

“It would have to be. You would never pass for a Muslim,” said Abu Hassar. He pointed at me and spoke to Abed: “He is such a Christian, he even looks like Jesus!”

I took a look at myself in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t shaved in a couple weeks. My face was a bit gaunt, my kinked hair a bit unkempt. “Maybe I look like Einstein?” I answered.

As we pulled over by his brother’s shop, Abu Hassar and I were still laughing.

“If I look like Jesus,” I said, “you look like the Prophet Muhammad.”

Abu Hassar shook his head. “No, I don’t look like the Prophet, peace be upon him.” He opened his door and a cold breeze filled our car. I could feel the rain outside hitting my neck. Abu Hassar grabbed my shoulder with his thick and powerful hands. He pushed his face close to mine. Again he was grinning.

“I look like the Mahdi.”

That comment, “He and I had spent the day somewhere else, in a different time” is particularly interesting from psychological, anthropological and theological angles.

[ by Charles Cameron — food for thought ]
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From the article titled My lunch with a jihadi by Elliot Ackerman yesterday on The Beast:

When I was first in the jihad, I was like a starving man feasting on the action. When I got older, I learned to eat more slowly, to be more patient. Even Al-Qaeda’s best men became too aggressive in Iraq. When they began to kill Christians and Jews who weren’t actively against the jihad, this was a mistake. In the Qu’ran it says not to do this. In the Bukhari, it is even written that the Prophet once left his armor in the possession of a Jew so it would be protected!

Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 45, Number 690:

Narrated ‘Aisha:

Allah’s Apostle bought some foodstuff from a Jew and mortgaged his armor to him.

Bewley’s more colloquial translation gives:

It is related that ‘A’isha said, “The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, bought some food from a Jew on credit and left his armour as security.”

That’s it, folks.

Just a quick link, but check out the SWJ interview that Octavian Manea has done with former DoD policy planning deputy Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken:

Lessons From Previous Competitive Strategies

SWJ: A key concept that Andrew Marshall and ONA developed and shaped is that of competitive strategies. To what extent did the concept of competitive strategies provide an intellectual construct for winning the Cold War and managing the great power competition during peacetime?

Thomas Mahnken: At one level, the term “competitive strategies” is a redundancy – one certainly wouldn’t want to implement uncompetitive strategies. Indeed, the very notion of competition lies at the heart of strategy.  That having been said, the logical notion that one should pay attention to one’s enduring comparative advantages and exploit a competitor’s enduring comparative weaknesses can at times be an alien way of thinking in a large bureaucracy like the Pentagon and the national security community.

One of the things that the Office of Net Assessment did from its founding in the mid 1970s was to tap into thinking in the business and management literature about how to formulate and implement a long-term strategy for competition. A competitive strategy is focused on peacetime interaction and is about the peacetime use of military power to shape a competitor’s choices in ways that favor our objectives. That is, it is concerned with the development, acquisition, deployment, and exercising of forces, as opposed to their use in combat. A competitive strategy assumes that the choices that the competitors have to make are constrained. A competitive strategy seeks to identify and exploit these constraints.

This overall concept did play a role in U.S. strategy in the 1970s and 1980s by pushing the senior Defense Department leadership to think more in these terms. That meant thinking more about areas of comparative advantage and disadvantage, about areas where we needed to be ahead and areas where we could afford not to be ahead. Over time, that approach played an important role in the U.S. strategic effectiveness, particularly in the late Cold War. First unconsciously and later consciously, the Defense Department carried out a series of competitive strategies against the Soviet Union and in the end that approach played a role in convincing the Soviet leadership that they couldn’t compete with the U.S. in a whole series of areas. 

(by Adam Elkus)

Daniel Nexon’s recent piece at his new blog asks a depressing question: why do so few political scientists that write on popular culture regard methodology as an afterthought? When not justifying the study of popular culture, people that write “____ and my favorite subject” pieces become literary scholars:

[S]cholars advanced social-theoretic arguments — almost always linguistic-turn in nature — for close readings of popular-culture texts. At the extreme you find what Iver and I refer to as “radical intertextuality.” If everything is intertext, then why study a foreign-policy speech when you can study Killzone? Why read the FOMC minutes when The Wolf of Wall Street beckons? These approaches are deeply theoretical, but they often aren’t terribly interested in methodology. Indeed, some variants of the “aesthetic turn” are  inflected by an anti-method stance. Analyzing popular culture becomes a subversive act aimed at those who insist on ‘rigorous science.’

One possible answer is that even intertext is actually simply a means to an end. In video game studies, there is a split between those that focus on narrative and those that focus on gameplay mechanics — though many bridge the gap. But when a natsec writer or scholar writes “what ___ teaches us about my pet subject” pieces (I often am guilty of falling into this category), they are often taking an instrumental approach to the object they are trying to explain. They want to use it as a prop to advance some point they are interested in making, and could easily have made elsewhere. If they are diligent, they will try to use close reading of the pop culture artifact to back up their points — as they would in a high school English class term paper. But they are still mostly imposing a reading of the narrative as to bolster their larger points about the academic or current-events subjects that really interest them.

The problem with this is that something like Star Wars is a world model with its own rules and mechanics. If you try to write a piece for Foreign Affairs about what the Deep Blue-Kasparov chess game tells us about the future of artificial intelligence in world politics — and somehow totally ignored the rules of chess in doing so — your piece would be of little value to anyone. One of my lessons from the Hoth roundtable in Danger Room I participated in was that the dynamics of the world model matter. Almost everyone ignored the Jedi-Sith conflict’s centrality over the Rebellion vs. Empire. Similarly, neglecting to mention Minovsky particles in my io9 piece on Gundam was fatal to the credibility of my argument. Without Minovsky particles, there is no justification for close-in robot or space fleet battles. The tactical and strategic system of the Gundam animes is built around the implications of long-range firepower being negated by Minovsky interference.

Of course, a world’s rules may not be coherent or consistent for a variety of reasons. The writer may have a muddled idea of how the world works, so like a perpetually glitchy computer program there are aspects of the fictional world that are aberrant or inconsistent. The probability of such “glitches” occurring approaches 1 if the world model tackles questions such as time travel that are actually the source of substantial debate in the sciences and philosophy. Second, for reasons external to the fictional world rules might be ultimately inconsistent. A reader familiar with the entire Marvel Comics canon might find it difficult to detect any underlying structure or regularity in a universe full of reboots, characters brought back to life, multiple conflicting timelines over different comic book titles, and various supernatural, mythological, extraterrestrial, and extra-dimensional lifeforms. Given the multiplicity of writers and artists that worked/work for/in the Marvel community and the commercial ups and downs of Marvel as a corporate entity, this is to be expected. The latter factor is particularly important, given that Lucas famously structured many aspects of Star Wars (the controversial Ewoks and the much-loathed Episode I) to sell kids’ toys.

Actually using methodology beyond just close-reading implies comfort with four dimensions of analysis:

1. The narrative of the pop culture object (the who and the what)

2. The underlying mechanics, rules, and laws of the pop culture object’s world

3. Basic subject matter expertise in the discipline you are trying to explain in terms of the pop culture object

4. Analytical methodology

This is a bridge too far for most people looking, as Nexon implies, to get out of the academic or analytical requirements of their own disciplines. But it’s a problem that really goes far beyond just the issue of “International Relations of Westeros”-esque pieces. It’s about the problem of assuming an a symmetry between one’s own world and that of the object of study. And it’s something that comes up quite frequently in history and area studies. Ignoring the underlying rules and mechanics — and by implication filling them in with your own.