Technological
advancement and the rise
of boundless warfare
Lecture 7 – Prof David Galbreath
• Reading
Schedule • Introduction to boundless warfare
• Changing character of war
• Future operating environment
• Emergent warfare
• Information at war
• Science at war
• Politics at war
• Challenge of innovation
• Changing technological landscape
• Emergent advances
• Vulnerabilities
• Conclusion
Reading
• Beyerchen, Alan. 1992. ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’. International Security 17(3): 59–90.
• Bousquet, Antoine. 2008. ‘Chaoplexic Warfare or the Future of Military Organization’. International Affairs 84(5): 915–29.
• Dudziak, Mary L. 2012. War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Guha, Manabrata. 2012. Reimagining War in the 21st Century: From Clausewitz to Network-Centric Warfare. London:
Routledge.
• Hedges, Chris. 2003. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. 1. Anchor Books ed. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
• Kass, Lani, and J. Phillip “Jack” London. 2013. ‘Surprise, Deception, Denial and Warning: Strategic Imperatives’. Orbis 57(1): 59–
82.
• Lindsay, Jon R. 2013. ‘Reinventing the Revolution: Technological Visions, Counterinsurgent Criticism, and the Rise of Special
Operations’. Journal of Strategic Studies 36(3): 422–53.
• Miller, Ruth. 2013. Snarl: In Defense of Stalled Traffic and Faulty Networks. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
http://www.press.umich.edu/5959928 (September 28, 2018).
• Neads, Alex, Theo Farrell, and David J. Galbreath. 2023. ‘Evolving towards Military Innovation: AI and the Australian Army’.
Journal of Strategic Studies 0(0): 1–30.
• O’Connell, Mary Ellen. 2012. ‘Cyber Security without Cyber War’. Journal of Conflict and Security Law 17(2): 187–209.
• Reid, Julian. 2003. ‘Foucault on Clausewitz: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between War and Power’. Alternatives: Global,
Local, Political 28(1): 1–28.
• Rosen, Stephen Peter. 1988. ‘New Ways of War: Understanding Military Innovation’. International Security 13(1): 134–68.
• Waldman, Thomas. 2010. ‘“Shadows of Uncertainty”: Clausewitz’s Timeless Analysis of Chance in War’. Defence Studies 10(3):
336–68.
• War and technology are codetermined, much in the
Introduction way that Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz
said of war and politics.
to boundless • Understanding why this is important for thinking
about the nature and character of war
• Consider the paving stones of Paris
warfare • Information and networks are unbounding war
• Increased levels of surveillance, identity theft, and
rise of ‘digital isolation’ (opposite of the network
effect).
• Modern and emergent warfare increasingly takes
place in an environment that challenges traditional
notions of space, time and information.
• This change in space, time and information suggests
that war is being changed by technology to become
increasingly fought across traditional boundaries
• Shifting in global and regional power
Changing • Demography
• Urbanisation
Character • Climate change
of War • Resource scarcity
• Corruption and criminality
• Relationships with the state (beyond the state)
• Technology
• What is the current operating environment?
Future • How can we talk about it as a generalisable
phenomenon? Perhaps:
operating Space
Time
environment Force
Identity
• What changes?
Civ-mil relations?
Democratic governance?
Law, lawfare and international law?
Decision-making?
Privacy and data driven society?
• How would we talk about emergent warfare?
Emergent • ‘‘the organization and exercise of military force
characterized by bio-information-driven self-
Warfare organizing networks and distributed operations,
conceptualized through the techno-scientific
frameworks of chaos theory and complexity
science.’ (Guha 2012)
Bio-information
Self-organising networks
Distributed operations
Chaos theory
Complexity
Information at war
• What impact does information have on the future
operating environment?
• Platforms and networks
• The shift in focus from the platform to the network
• The shift from viewing actors as being independent
agents to viewing them as being part of a continuously
adapting ecosystem
• The importance of making strategic choices to adapt or
even survive in evolving ecosystems
Geo- Detect
informatic
preempt classify
Contextualise,
Magnify,
Granulate
understand Identify
Bio- Semio-
informatic informatic track
• Convergence:
Science at • Where two previously separate fields of scientific
knowledge merge into either a separate field from
war their parent fields or supersede them to become
the replacing field of scientific knowledge.
Processors and mechanics
Biology and engineering
Cognition and code
Informatics and networks
processors mechanics biology engineering cognition code informatics networks
processors robotics enhancement urgency wetware learning systems analytics
mechanics simulation traditional awareness agency sensors combined
Synthetic
biology biology life alternatives swarm complexes
engineering sustainability self-generate report/repair adaptation
cognition enhancement process joined up
code resilience complexity
informatics systems
networks
• National security and threat perception
Politics at • Cyber and Attribution
• Uneven rates of innovation
War • War and political history
• War time vs Peace time
• Technology and political tragedy
• War and the body politique
Challenges of Innovation
• Maintaining a strategic edge
• Proliferation
• Tempo of technological change
• Adaptation
• Key technological capabilities
Changing • Anti-access and area denial capabilities
Technological • Remote and automatic systems
• Novel weapons (e.g. GPS alt)
landscape • Nuclear Weapons
• Other weapons of mass effect
• Quantum Technologies
Emergent • ICT advances in storage and bandwidth
• Big Data Surveillance
advances • Cyberspace
• Electromagnetic tech
• Bio-engineering
• Machine learning
• Information environment
Vulnerabilities Critical secure systems
Adapting networks to the built environment
The ubiquitous network
Managing information
Broadcasting
• Built environment
The global commons
Access and vulnerabilities
Supply lines
Dependency on space
Economic zones
Governance
Urban and littoral challenges
• Future operating environments will vary as they
Conclusion arise from converging challenges to international
security and diverge from established methods of
handling them.
• Science and technology will reshape the way we
interact with these future operating environments.
• Futures are determined, they are not found.
