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ABSTRACT
The Information Revolution, or the rise in computing power, allowed states to leverage digital capabilities to exert conventional military dominance. But does it also create vulnerabilities that lead to war? In this piece, I examine the relationship between military revolutions and conflict initiation and identify a capability/vulnerability paradox that suggests the degree of capability dependence created by a military revolution combined with the ability of adversaries to exploit vulnerabilities creates potential pockets of dangerous instability. These indicators suggest that greater centralisation and data dependencies could move the Information Revolution towards incentives for instability.
Acknowledgments
For their helpful feedback along the way, the author would like to thank Caitlin Talmadge, Charlie Glaser, Martha Finnemore, Robert Jervis, Henry Farrell, Paul Scharre, Neil Narang, Todd Sechser, Peter Dombrowski, as well as participants at workshops at George Washington University and a workshop hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See, inter alia, Owens and Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War; Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, 37–54; Cohen, ‘Change and Transformation in Military Affairs’, 395–407; Dahl, ‘Network Centric Warfare and Operational Art’, 17–34; Cebrowski and Garstka, ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin And Future’, 28–35; and Mazarr, The revolution in military affairs: A framework for defense planning.
2 Bob Work, ‘The Third U.S. offset strategy and its implications for partners and allies’, 28 Jan. 2015.
3 Schneider, ‘Digitally-enabled warfare: The capability-vulnerability paradox’, Center for a New American Security, 29 Aug. 2016.
4 Keohane and Nye, ‘Power and Interdependence in the Information Age’, 81–94; Nye, and Owens, ‘America’s information edge’, 20–36; Lonsdale, The Nature of War in the Information Age; Owen, Disruptive Power; Metz, Armed conflict in the 21st century: the information revolution and post-modern warfare; and Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare.
5 Lynn, ‘Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon’s Cyber Strategy’, 98.
6 Cebrowski and Garstka, ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its origin and Future’; and Cares, Distributed Networked Operations: The Foundations of Network Centric Warfare.
7 Dafoe and Garfinkel, ‘How Does the Offense-Defense Balance Scale?’.
8 The term revolution in military affairs (or RMA) was in vogue in the 90s and early 2000s, especially within the U.S. defense sector. In this analysis I am using the more general term military revolution because it is less connected with the particular RMA defense policies of that time period.
9 Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions’, 30. For other definitions of military revolution and RMA see, Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History; Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the rise of the West 1500–1800; Knox and Murray, The dynamics of military revolution 1300–2050; and Metz and Kievit, Strategy and the Revolution in Military Affairs: From Theory to Policy.
10 Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.’
11 See, inter alia, Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History; Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the rise of the West 1500–1800; Knox and Murray, The dynamics of military revolution 1300–2050; Murray and Millett, Military Innovation in the i nterwar period; Wim Smit and John Grin, Military Technological Innovation and Stability in a Changing World: Politically Assessing and Influencing Weapon Innovation and Military Research and Development; Metz and Kievit, Strategy and the Revolution in Military Affairs: From Theory to Policy; Millett and Murray, (eds.), Military Effectiveness: Volume 2, The Interwar Period; Rosen, Winning the next war: Innovation and the modern military.
12 Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Gilpin, War and change in world politics; and Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics.
13 Gartzke, ‘Blood and Robots: How Remotely Piloted Vehicles and Related Technologies Affect the Politics of Violence’; Sechser, Narang, and Talmadge, ‘Emerging Technologies and Strategic Stability in Peacetime, Crisis, and War.’
14 Glaser, ‘The Security Dilemma Revisited’, 171–201; Glaser and Kaufmann, ‘What is the Offense-Defense Balance and How Can We Measure It?’ 44–82; Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, 167–214; Herz, ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’, 157–180; VanEvera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict; Quester, Offense Defense in the International System; Volpe, ‘Duel-Use Distinguishability: how 3D-Printing Shapes the Security Dilemma for Nuclear Programs’.
15 Lynn-Jones, ‘Offense-defense theory and its critics’, 660–691; and Lieber, ‘Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security’, 71–104.
16 Jervis, ‘Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?’ 36–60.
17 Van Evera, ‘The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War’, 58–107; Snyder, ‘Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 108–146; Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine; Kier, ‘Culture and military doctrine: France between the wars’, 65–93.
18 See, inter alia, Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risk and Cimbala, First Strike Stability: Deterrence after Containment; Talmadge, ‘Emerging Technology and Intra-War Escalation Risks: Evidence from the Cold War, Implications for Today,’; Williams, ‘Asymmetric Arms Control and Strategic Stability: Scenarios for Limiting Hypersonic Glide Vehicles’; Horowitz, ‘When Speed Kills: Autonomous Weapon Systems, Deterrence, and Stability’.
19 Metz and James Kievit describe this as the breakthrough point in the adoption of military revolutions in, Strategy and the Revolution in Military Affairs: From Theory to Policy.
20 See similar logic as it applies to nuclear first strike in Jervis, The Meaning of Nuclear Revolution.
21 Schneider, ‘Digitally-enabled warfare: The capability-vulnerability paradox’.
22 Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800.
23 Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army, (Washington, DC: Center for Army History 1981);Salay, ‘The Production of Gunpowder in Pennsylvania During the American Revolution’; Stephenson, ‘The Supply of Gunpowder in 1776ʹ; Kelly, Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World; Dick, ‘The Gunpowder Shortage’.
24 Barry Posen, ‘Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power’, International Security 18/2 (Fall 1993), 80–124; Isser Woloch, ‘Napoleonic Conscription: State Power and Civil Society’, Past & Present, 111 (May 1986), 101–129; Michael Broers, ‘The Concept of Total War in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Period’, War in History 15 (2008), 250–275; Louis Bergeron, France Under Napoleon (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1981); Mackenzie, Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era; Jean-Paul Bertaud, The Army of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988); William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: technology, armed force, and society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982); and Snyder, ‘The Citizen-Soldier and the Tragedy of the Eighteenth Brumaire’.
25 Knox and Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution.
26 Caitlin Talmadge, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2016); Caitlin Talmadge, ‘The Puzzle of Personalist Performance: Iraqi Battlefield Effectiveness in the Iran-Iraq War’, Security Studies 22/2 (2013), 180–221; Samuel P. Huntington, The soldier and the state: The theory and politics of civil-military relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1957); Snyder, ‘Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984ʹ; Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing your battles: American civil-military relations and the use of force (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2011).
27 Posen, ‘Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power’.
28 Haycock and Neilson, Men, Machines & War.
29 Glaser, ‘How Oil Influences National Security’, 107–141.
30 Ibid 177.
31 Glaser, ‘How Oil Influences National Security’; Colgan, ‘Oil, Domestic Politics, and International Conflict’ 198–205; Hughes and Long, ‘Is there an oil weapon? Security Implications of Changes in the Structure of the International Oil Market’, 152–189; Colgan, ‘Oil and Revolutionary Governments: Fuel for International Conflict’,, 661–694; Pearson, In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950–1958; and Kelanic, ‘The Petroleum Paradox: Oil, Coercive Vulnerability, and Great Power Behavior’, 181–2013.
32 Brantly, The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making; O’Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of War; Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting: Can the Army after next be Defeated through Complex Concepts and Technologies?.
33 Halpin, Cyberwar, Netwar, and the Revolution in Military Affairs; Brantly, The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making; and Demchak, Wars of Disruption and Resilience (Athens: University of Georgia Press 2011).
34 Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5: Operations, (1976), 2–26.
35 U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Operational Access Concept 17 Jan. 2012.
36 U.S. Department of Defense, Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, (2012), 6.
37 Chandler Atwood and Jeffrey White. ‘Syrian air-defense capabilities and the threat to potential U.S. air operations’, The Washington Institute, 23 May 2014.
38 Ward Caroll, ‘Israel’s cyber shot at Syria’, Defensetech.org, 26 Nov. 2007.
39 Angus Batey, ‘F-35 logistics system may be vulnerable to cyberattack’, Aviation Week, 3 Mar. 2016.
40 Valerie Insinna, ‘Troubled Logistics System Critical to F-35s Future’, National Defense Magazine, Apr. 2015.
41 Bill Carey, ‘GAO Questions Deployability, Redundancy, of F-35 ALIS System’, AIN Online, 21 Apr. 2016.
42 Danzig, ‘Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the National Security Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies’, Center for a New American Security, 21 Jul. 2014.
43 Rid, Cyber war will not take place; Valeriano and Maness, Cyber war Versus Cyber Realities: Cyber Conflict in the International System; Valeriano, Jensen, and Maness, Cyber Strategy: The Changing Character of Cyber Power and Coercion; Lindsay, ‘Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare’, 365–404; and Gartzke, ‘The Myth of Cyberwar: Bringing War in Cyberspace Back down to Earth’, 41–73.
44 Gompert and Libicki, ‘Cyber Warfare and Sino-American Crisis Instability’, 7–22.
45 Kotzanikolaou, Theoharidou, and Gritzalis, ‘Interdependencies between Critical Infrastructures: Analyzing the Risk of Cascading Effects’, 104–115.
46 Schneider, ‘Cyber and Crisis Escalation: Insights from Wargaming.’
47 Schneider, ‘JEDI: Outlook for Stability Uncertain as Pentagon Migrates to the Cloud’.
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Jacquelyn Schneider
Jacquelyn Schneider is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member of the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute at the Naval War College. The views in the article are the author’s own and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.