War

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?

possess them.
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 / 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
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