War Games: How Combat is changing around the World
For the amount that I confront new technologies and their effect of consumer markets, I rarely look into one of the biggest markets in the world for tech: war. Albeit secretive and private, it’s no secret that around the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003, there was no better place on Earth to make money, whether through the selling of arms or the extraction of oil. War technology is kept relatively secret because of its obvious controversies, and historically has only been exposed to the public at times of great need, such as the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
Times have changed significantly since that point, and rarely do nations get the opportunity to demonstrate so easily where the billions of dollars actually go. There’s enough speculation to predict which technologies are being utilized, but in exactly what way is unknown. War technology appears to be changing with the times, and in a modern context, fighting between nations and proxy states is shifting from the physical battleground into the digital realm.
If we consider where most nations hide or store their valuable assets, it’s in some form of digital containment. Whether it’s a server or network, these digital assets are in some cases vital to communications and operations of a state’s defence or military strength. As such, it makes sense for countries to fight within the digital realm. North Korea has already been accused of using digital warfare for extortion and extrapolation in relation to the Sony Pictures hack, eventually accumulation in terrorist threats against cinema’s which planned to show ‘The Interview’, a parody of Kim Jong Un.
The tactics of this theoretical warfare, often dubbed war games by the media, and the technologies that support them are in some cases well documented. China has been accused repeatedly by the United States of stealing important military schematics, classified information, and other valuable assets to use against them.
This kind of stand-off is reminiscent of the cold war era, with two superpowers facing off with potentially disastrous weapons that could affect a much wider margin of people. To make matters worse, these are the weapons and stand-offs that have been documented to the public; the full extent and possible destructive capabilities of digital war tactics is currently unknown. As I mentioned earlier, billions are diverted from national budgets to create and maintain weapons that fit within the modern war context, and these are certainly not limited to the digital realm.
Interestingly, because a military is mandated to protect the civilians of a nation, they are most often the people funding these projects through their taxes. The rest of the money usually comes from specialist intelligence, military communications, and technology firms, who also go on to sell these technologies overseas to less advanced forces, making themselves a very large profit at the same time. This would make advanced military technologies partly owned by the people, so it’s especially strange that so little is known about them.
The increasing presence of Drones on the battlefield is also seen as an indicator of these impending war games. Unmanned and deadly vehicles being sent into the battlefield, controlled miles away by an unknown person, has been viewed as a precursor to the faceless future of digital warfare.
Whilst it can be viewed positively that the lives of soldiers will not be endangered as frequently, the limitation of combat fatalities could be insignificant next to the growing presence of a well-oiled digital war machine, which could further perpetuate the power of an already firmly rooted industrial military complex.
