Big Questions

Does human nature doom us to fight one another?

• When did war first start?
• Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities?
• Why are warriors almost always men?
• Is war ever within our control?

Should autonomous drones make the kill decision without a human in the loop?

• Should we ban autonomous nuclear weapons?
• De need a new international accord to control drone proliferation?

How many nuclear warheads exist in the world?

• What’s our long-term plan to reduce this number to zero?

Does Donald Trump’s $400M personal debt and current/planned business interests with foreign entities (Russia, Turkey, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, et al) pose a huge conflict of interest and a national security threat?

Has the disruption of the military by COVID-19 pushed the military towards more autonomous force projection across all of its strategic platforms?

• Are machines now more reliable then humans?
• Will Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based hyperwar’s super-speed obsolete human intervention and control?

Will we need ai to defend against ai? Is that like an ai-dog chasing its ai-tail?

If AI can produce human-equivalent writing-on-demand, does the pen become mightier than the sword in terms of its propaganda potential and impact on people and countries?

• Should we consider Russia’s and China’s cyber-meddling in our affairs an act of war?
• How will we fight state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda in the future?

Big Picture

Big Picture / Human Society / Politics & Government / War

Degrees and kinds of war

The theory and conduct of war

• Strategy
• Tactics of land warfare
• Naval tactics
• Air tactics
• Logistics
• Intelligence
• Guerilla warfare
• Cyber-War
  • anti-surveillance: Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • cold war:
    • Truman Doctrine: Saving Freedom by Joe Scarborough
    • Bridge of Spies
    • The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by le Carré
  • news & analysis: Schneier on Security
  • phone spyware: Pegasus
  • russian influence: The Great Hack
  • social media: Messing with the Enemy by Watts
  • survival: Click Here to Kill Everybody by Schneier

Military

The consequences of war

• concentration camps: Auschwitz Remembered
• Law of Retaliation: Act of War (sp)
• integration into society: War by Margaret MacMillan

Further reading:

• chaoas: Trump and His Generals Bergen
• classics:
  • War and Peace Tolstoy
  • Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lawrence
• endless war:
  • The Forever War Haldeman
  • A Nation Unmade by War Engelhardt
• ISIS/Al-Qaeda: Anatomy of Terror Soufan
• journalism: TomDispatch
• mercenaries & plausible deniability: The New Rules of War McFate
• national security:
  • White House, Inc. by Dan Alexander
  • Battlegrounds by H. R. McMaster
• nuclear warheads: Nuclear Notebook (nuclear arsenals of the world)
• Vietnam:
  • The Fog of War McNamara
  • A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
• weaponization of technology: The Pentagon’s Brain Jacobsen