The 'Future of War' Project: New America Foundation and Arizona State University

So I was reading my local (joke of a) online newspaper and came across this little nugget:

ASU teams with think tank on Future of War project

WASHINGTON — Arizona State University announced Tuesday it is teaming up with a Washington think tank to explore the changing nature of war and global conflict in a project called the Future of War.

The university is partnering with the New America think tank to focus on issues such as the increasing use of unmanned drones in warfare, the threat of cyberattacks, and the rise of violent conflicts started by terrorist groups such as the ISIS extremists now trying to take over Syria and Iraq.

This kinda struck me the wrong way, so I decided to stroll on over to New America's website to see what they had to say about the whole thing. It didn't really help alleviate my negative gut reaction:

ABOUT THIS PROGRAM

Developments both in the technological drivers of warfare and the enemies we face have erased the boundaries between what we have traditionally regarded as “war” and “peace.”

You couldn't have a more blatant reference to/example of Newspeak: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery." Etc.

OUR OBJECTIVES

New America is in a unique position to describe the future of warfare in the next decade or more, predict its likely impact on the state and other forms of social organization, do the heavy theoretical lifting that will develop a new paradigm for armed conflict/systematic violence across borders, and prescribe the laws and international protocols necessary to help govern that future.

Lovely. The academic arm of the 21st-century global military-industrial complex.

I tried to read some of their policy essays, but the site it links to wants me to register in order to read anything (which I'm not going to do, but maybe another member is willing). Figures. Typical.

Anyway, some of the titles alone might give us an idea of what these guys are about:

FoW No. 2: The attack of the robot rats in the Korean War of 2019

FoW No. 9: There won’t be a next war, because the current one will never end

FoW No. 12: It’s coming to a neighborhood near you -- the homeland

FoW No. 14: It is gonna be pretty much like it was for the last 4,000 years

FoW No. 22: An actuary looks at the Future of War -- and sees a nuclear war looming there

FoW No. 26: You better be ready to fight like it's a pre-electronic age

In a word, yikes! And they've teamed up with academia in my backyard, an extensive research facility at their disposal.

ASU will be home to a new Future of War center that will link faculty members from a variety of disciplines to explore everything from weapons technology to conflicts arising from power struggles over scarce water supplies.

I dunno. It could be just another impotent excuse for research grant money, but it kinda stinks of NWO scheming.

Anyone have anything on this that doesn't require registering with some snooty website?

a reply to: NthOther
Never mind

a reply to: NthOther

Yes, I got something. Foreign Policy's IT guys are not the greatest and best in the field and it appears most, or all, of New America's papers are published there.

Notice that when you click on the articles you listed, the article shows up for a few seconds before you get the prompt to register. In those few seconds, click the "x" in the url bar to stop loading the page...it will stop the script from loading to registration.

Enjoy the article.

Thanks.

a reply to: NthOther

You are most welcome, and thank you for bringing this to our attention. I've seen/read a couple of these articles in the past but I've long forget about them. Nor did I dig into it and get the connections you brought forward.

Just an FYI, I always have access to academic articles by always ensuring I know someone attending, or working, at a university who doesn’t' mind me logging in as them to search all the academic databases.

In my opinion it's quite simple.

The war of the future will be an aerial war.

Batteries will have improved dramatically in energy storage, recharge times.
Energy efficiency will improve as well.

Masses of drones will litter the skies of enemy countries above every part of it collecting data via camera's and sensors attached on every drone.

Armed drones large and small, mothership drones, baby drones. Huge swaths of data will be collected and catalogued and sorted through by AI systems. Commanders will have a view of the whole battlefield.

How to defend against that? You can't. The only way to win for the enemy is to sneak in and EMP the country with all those drones... Cause enough chaos on their home soil that they will forget about your country....