Automated War is Still War

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A few years ago I read that a Chinese PLA general had predicted that, by 2025, there would be no soldiers in the battlespace - the fighting would be conducted wholly by machine systems. A bit of techno-optimism there, but based on contemporary Ukraine drone-warfare, not so far out.

So we can all relax: war has lost its sting; who cares if the drones get mashed?

Not so fast!

We need to look more deeply into war - politics by other means. The purpose of war is not to kill and destroy - these are means, not ends. The purpose of war is to change the other guy’s mind; or to obliterate him.

As Stalin is reputed to have said: “No man, no problem.”

We may have to get through a lot of drones to get to the other guy, but in the end our human adversary has to feel sufficient pain that they give up, submitting to our will. Until they feel the pain, they will not stop fighting us.

How much pain?

They have to believe that we are about to hurt or kill those they care about. They have to accept we will destroy their economy, their state, and eject them from power into ignominy or worse.

When the Russian elite, in the Ukraine ‘Special Military Operation’, send hundreds of thousands of troops into the mincing machine of the front, and succeed in inching forward, they are treating those soldiers (who are not their own children) as biological drones.

When Israel uses precision strikes and AI systems to kill its enemies en masse with few own-force casualties, it demonstrates the allure of war-automation when you have it and your opponent does not. Their decision makers suffer extreme pain; you do not because your people are not taking casualties and you are not existentially threatened; not in the slightest.

However, if both sides have peer-capability in automated warfare, then the drones will destroy each other until one side runs out of matériel. Then the other side will come after the human decision makers and offer them that classic choice: submit or die.

Forget complacency. Automated war is still war. Eventually one side will win and one side will lose.

Winning is much, much better.