EVOLUTION OF WAR
(Posted 2010-01-21 17:58:29 by ArchPaladin)

I came across a news story [
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-security19-2010jan19,0,7858556.story
] [latimes.com] yesterday about the change in focus for military
contractors, which are shifting from developing military technology for
physical attacks to developing research facilities for information
warfare.

In keeping up with the technical news, I come across these stories fairly
regularly.  Most often they talk about how the military is looking to
develop a solid base of computer security, but it is interesting to see an
admission from a military contractor that this is going to be the next big
thing for them to do, instead of making warships or other physical
weapons.

It strikes me that the landscape of war is changing.  Up to the 1970's we
still had major physical conflicts, and while of course we still have
physical conflicts now, those appear to be more localized to regions that
are not able to engage in warfare by other means.  In the past 30-50 years
we have also seen the rise of major economic warfare (ie. the Cold War) and
all of what that entailed.  I think my generation will see a broader use of
information warfare and a shifting of the areas of engagement between
countries (an obvious statement to some, I am certain).

All methods of war I stated above have been used since time immemorial. 
And I don't think we are going to go out of our way to declare outright war
on other nations.  What I do think is just that as different cultures and
nations become more interdependent and complex, the nature, scope, and
methods of war change to become more subtle.  Not less brutal or
consequential, just more subtle.  I believe that in becoming more subtle,
war also becomes more refined - but I only mean that in a semantic sense
(ie. more conceptually distinct, as a conflict of wills) rather than in a
moral sense (ie. more pure or righteous).

It would be interesting to see a day when no warfare is physically fought,
but I have my doubts that such a day will happen.

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