When Steven Spielberg’s movie Minority Report was made in 2002, they brought together fifteeen futurists and technology experts to predict what life would be like in the year 2054. Many of the things featured in the film, they predicted would arrive around 2020. And right on schedule, robotic dogs and insects are now used by police forces, and manufactured mosquitos do battle with real mosquitos. Retina scanners, and multi-touch surfaces which looked so futuristic then are familiar to us today. Targeted ads were also heavily featured in Minority Report–an idea which seemed over-the-top, but which we now deal with everyday–especially on Facebook. Autonomous cars are well on their way, but not quite at the level the film predicted by the year 2054. We are easily on target, however, to make those cars a reality. Most interesting, is that surveillance technology has grown exponentially and is used on street-corners even in poorer developing nations. But there is still the question of warfare. Can warfare between nations be prevented the way crime was prevented in the film?
The world is still used to thinking of war as being when one country uses artillary and troops to attack, destroy, or invade a foreign territory and conquer a foreign military. Since the dawn of empires, warfare has been bloody and involved very direct confrontation. The pinnacle of global warfare were the nucelar bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 by a handful of American men flying a few thousand feet above the city evading Japanese air surveillance. Although warfare has continued since then, it has gotten less frequent, less violent, and the cost has gone up significantly. Fielding a top-notch military is an enormous burden which requires large sums of taxation, maintenance of countless ships, planes, and weapons, constant research and development, as well as maintaining morale sky high even during long periods of peace. For most countries, it is simply not worth the cost. Furthermore, as we have seen in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, having the world’s best military doesn’t mean it’s easy to actually conquer and hold territory. Real control of an invaded country requires colonization–something hardly any country in the world is interested in doing–including the United States–the country most likely to be at war on any given day.
China, the United States, and Russia are experimenting with hyper-sonic weapons, robots that will take the place of troops, and weapons that use direct-energy attacks to sicken people invisibly without them knowing they are even being attacked. Futuristic, Minority Report-like weaponry is here. However, the weakest great power out there–Russia, is showing that it makes far more sense to outsource war to groups of hackers and mercenaries that can then allow the Russians to claim plausible deniability. These two parties support disinformation campaigns which are aimed at targeting the most divisive issues in any particular country in order to create local civil wars that weaken their enemies from within. In other words, why try to compete militarily with the European Union or invade Britain when you can just use the internet to foster division within the United Kingdom about whether they should be a part of the E.U. It’s a hot topic. Exploit it and make the situation combustible. If it’s France, create websites, tweets, and propaganda that exploit the tension involving Muslim immigration. If it’s the United States, exploit the Red-Blue political divide etc. This saves a lot of money, can’t be easily traced back to the hostile, attacking government, and makes enemy countries fall from within, instead of having to fight them on the battlefield (and spend trillions of dollars, Reminbi, or Rubbles).
This is not a new tactic. It was practiced by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in the 1920’s and the C.I.A. has done these kind of misinformation campaigns for decades all over the world. But the internet makes this all easier and more exponential. Facebook and Twitter are Silicon Valley-designed products that are designed to get attention and create outrage. They then become addictive. No weapon can be designed that can do better than that.
A Russian-backed organization has repeatedly attacked U.S. pipelines in recent weeks, which will most likely cause a rise in oil prices. “Darkside” outsourced its hacking abilities to a foreign actor. This is known as “ransom-ware-as-a-service.” These are Cybermercenaries for hire. But it’s not just Russia using cyber-warfare and disinformation campaigns. China is using it as well against its two chief rivals: India and the United States.
The best hackers in the world, and the best cyber-defense still belongs to the United States. But it is not clear when and how the U.S. has been defending itself amidst an onslaught of hostile attacks over the past few years. Other than the stuxnet cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear program, it’s not clear who the U.S. might be attacking recently. China and Russia’s assymetrical warfare is, however, quite out in the open at this point. While this form of warfare may be preferable to the horrific wars in the 18th Century or a nuclear exchange, they do target something that is incredibly precious: a nation’s sense of community. By preying upon the natural divisions within countries (and exaggerating them through conspiracy theories and trying to raise political militants), nationhood becomes increasingly fragile. Most of the targeted countries are caught in a rhetorical civil war at the moment, with growing fringe elements militarizing. The hope is that we are living in the wild wild West days of the internet where people can still be easily manipulated, lied to, and stolen from through social media and websites. For now, people need to be on alert. There is a war going on between the world’s superpowers and the main goal is to fill your digitial experience with propaganda, lies, conpiracy theories, and dislike of your own nation and fellow-citizens.