Page 44 - The Economist Asia January 2018

SPECIAL REPORT
THE FUTURE OF WAR

control agreements are fraying. The protocols and understand-
The enemy within ingsthathelped avertArmageddon duringthe cold warhave not
Number of armed conflicts by type been renewed.
Russia and China now fear that technological advances
60
Extrastate could allow America to threaten their nuclear arsenals without
Interstate 50 resorting to a nuclear first strike. America has been working at a
Intrastate conceptknown asConventional PromptGlobal Strike (CPGS) for
40
over a decade, though weapons have yet to be deployed. The
30 idea is to deliver a conventional warhead with a very high de-
20 gree of accuracy, at hypersonic speeds (at least five times faster
than the speed of sound), through even the most densely de-
10 fended airspace. Possible missionsinclude counteringanti-satel-
0 lite weapons; targeting the command-and-control nodes of ene-
1946 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 2000 05 10 16 my A2/AD networks; attacking the nuclear facilities of a rogue
Source: UCDP proliferatorsuch as North Korea; and killingimportant terrorists.
Russia and China claim thatCPGScould be highlydestabilising if
used in conjunction with advanced missile defences. Mean-
2 Increasingly, they will be fought in urban environments, if while they are developingsimilarweapons oftheirown.
only because by 2040 two-thirds of the world’s population will Other potential threats to nuclear stability are attacks on
be living in cities. The number ofmegacities with populations of nuclearcommand-and-control systemswith the cyber- and anti-
more than 10m has doubled to 29 in the past 20 years, and each satellite weapons that all sides are investing in, which could be
year nearly 80m people are moving from rural to urban areas. In- used to disable nuclearforces temporarily. Crucially, the identity
tense urban warfare, as demonstrated by the recent battles for of the attacker may be ambiguous, leaving those under attack
Aleppo and Mosul, remains grinding and indiscriminate, and uncertain how to respond.
will continue to present difficult problems for well-meaning
Western intervention forces. Technologywill change war in cities Rise of the killer robots
asmuch asothertypesofwarfare, butitwill still have to be fought Atleastthe world knowswhatitislike to live in the shadow
at close quarters, blockby block. ofnuclearweapons. There are much biggerquestion-marks over
Even though full-scale interstate warfare between great how the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep
powers remains improbable, there is still scope for less severe learning will affect the way wars are fought, and perhaps even
formsofmilitarycompetition. In particular, both Russia and Chi- the way people think of war. The big concern is that these tech-
na now seem unwilling to accept the international dominance nologies may create autonomous weapons systems that can
ofAmerica thathasbeen a factoflife in the 20 yearssince the end make choicesaboutkillinghumansindependentlyofthose who
of the cold war. Both have an interest in challenging the Ameri- created or deployed them. An international “Campaign to Stop
can-sponsored international order, and both have recently Killer Robots” is seeking to ban lethal autonomous weapons be-
shown that they are prepared to apply military force to defend fore theyeven come into existence. Aletterto thateffect, warning
what they see as their legitimate interests: Russia by annexing againsta comingarmsrace in autonomousweapons, wassigned
Crimea and destabilising Ukraine, and China by building mili- in 2015 by over 1,000 AI experts including Stephen Hawking,
tarised artificial islands and exerting force in disputes with re- Elon Muskand Demis Hassabis.
gional neighbours in the South and East China Seas. Such a ban seems unlikely to be introduced, but there is
In the past decade, both China and Russia have spent room for debate about how humans should interact with ma-
heavilyon a wide range ofmilitarycapabilitiesto counter Amer- chines capable of varying degrees of autonomy, whether in the
ica’scapacityto projectpoweron behalfofthreatened or bullied loop (with a human constantly monitoringthe operation and re-
allies. In military jargon, these capabilities are known as anti-ac- maining in charge of critical decisions), on the loop (with a hu-
cess/area denial or A2/AD. Their aim is not to go to war with man supervising machines that can intervene at any stage ofthe
America but to make an American intervention more risky and mission) or out of the loop (with the machine carrying out the
more costly. That has increasingly enabled Russia and China to mission withoutanyhuman intervention once launched). West-
exploit a “grey zone” between war and peace. Grey-zone opera- ern militaryestablishmentsinsistthatto complywith the lawsof
tions aim to reap either political or territorial gains normally as- armed conflict, a human must always be at least on the loop. But
sociated with overt military aggression without tipping over the some countries may not be so scrupulous if fully autonomous
threshold into open warfare with a powerful adversary. They are systems are seen to confermilitary advantages.
all about calibration, leverage and ambiguity. The grey zone par- Such technologies are being developed around the globe,
ticularly lends itself to hybrid warfare, a term first coined about most of them in the civil sector, so they are bound to proliferate.
ten years ago. Definitions vary, but in essence it is a blurring of In 2014 the Pentagon announced its “Third Offset Strategy” to re-
military, economic, diplomatic, intelligence and criminal means gain its military edge by harnessing a range of technologies in-
to achieve a political goal. cludingrobotics, autonomoussystemsand bigdata, and to do so
The main reason why big powers will try to achieve their faster and more effectively than potential adversaries. But even
political objectivesshortofoutrightwarisstill the nuclearthreat, its most ardent advocates know that the West may never again
but it does not follow that the “balance of terror” which charac- be able to rely on its superior military technology. Robert Work,
terised the cold war will remain as stable as in the past. Russia the deputy defence secretary who championed the third offset,
and America are modernising their nuclear forces at huge ex- argues that the West’s most enduring military advantage will be
pense and China is enlarging its nuclear arsenal, so nuclear the qualityofthe people produced byopen societies. It would be
weapons may be around until at least the end of the century. comforting to think that the human factor, which has always
Both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, in their very different been a vital component in past wars, will still count for some-
ways, enjoy a bit ofnuclearsabre-rattling. Existingnuclear-arms- thingin the future. But there is uncertainty even about that. 7

4 The Economist January 27th 2018