« Be like Mailer | Home | Birthplaces of Mississippi Blues Artists »
Technology and the War in Iraq
By Martin English | December 21, 2007
Noah Shactman of Wired’s Defense blog Danger Room has written a mammoth article entitled How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic. It is a heavy duty read, but coming as I’m reading about the Battle of Long Tan, the article’s emphasis on how controling counter insurgency is as much a social issue as a technological issue.
From his blog:
The war was launched, in part, on a premise that you could wipe out more bad guys with fewer troops, as long as those troops were networked together. Businesses like Wal-Mart made their supply chain more efficient through information technology; the military could do the same with its “kill chain,” the theory of network-centric warfare went.
The idea — first popularized in article published ten years ago, next month — pretty much worked as advertised, for a while. The problem is, killing people more efficiently is one of the last things you need to do a counterinsurgency situation, like the one the U.S. is facing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, you need to take steps to reinforce civil society, rather than blowing it apart. And that takes an understanding of the society you’re trying to build.
Topics: History, Politics, Technology | No Comments »
Share on FriendFeed Tweet This