News from the Front Lines

The idea of a front line is a modern invention. It is linked to the technological capabilities: before the industrial era there were no front lines. There were battles in which you could somehow draw a line of contact between belligerents. It is the industrial revolution coming with rail transportation, telegraph, and mass conscription (french invention) that the idea of controlling territory behind clear lines (together with the idea of rear), with all the logistics issues linked, appeared. Notice that passports appeared around the same time. Before it was too hard to move around casually anyway. The idea of border was not really one of the one of an administrative line between two states. Things were kind of inverted with relation to what is going on today: the King and his castle were clear cut, the rest of the lands were rather areas of influence. The most important question being: who is going to get the taxes… Nowadays the line of nation states are clearly defined and more than that seen as God-given (the sacro-saint “international order”). The war in Ukraine is weird because it takes this ancient modern form, with a clearly defined front line, to wage war and mixes it with brand new things like drones.

This post is about the future of war after the topological revolution. I already posted about a new strategic idea that appears to take shape : percolation

Here I am going to analyze further the implications of the new technologies have to the art of war.

The scale and the sword

Peter Thiel preferred riff, about the slowing down of innovation, might be correct but maybe misses an important point. Even if we admit the thesis —that the world of atoms has stopped accelerating, and only the world of electrons is going faster— there is a blind spot: the scale of access to speed has change. It is true that 2025 airliners aren’t going any faster than airliners of the 70s. But the availability of air travel has skyrocketed: from 310 millions to 4.5 billions air travelers per year. In terms of ratio with relation to the world population the figures give 8.4% vs 56%. Likewise the speed of light has remained the same but the number of communications between continents has exploded. It is not only the revolution of communication and computational power that is important, it is rather the massification of the phenomenon that changes everything.

A similar analysis has to be done with relations warfare. A huge advantage that a military corps has vs a loose band of militias is its capacity to synchronize and organize itself towards precise aims. I have always been struck by Joe Biden’s remark that “you need F-15s to take on the federal government”. It is obviously wrong. At the technical scale it is wrong because F-15 pilots have family (that can be held hostage with basic guns in case of civil as was the context with J. Biden’s quote), but it also displays a profound misunderstanding of what makes an army powerful. It is not because an army has access to powerful equipment, it is rather a consequence of the fact that it is a large body of experts (real ones) that work in synchrony to achieve a goal. But new information technologies have introduced new ways to synchronize that do not rely on large hierarchical structures. Just like bitcoiners can make the network to work without having to know each other. It is more than an allegory. Distributed systems are based on those new capabilities, and if you think of it everything that you are doing using your phone is a distributed system.

The question becomes: how, and how much, are those synchronization capabilities going to translate into operational capabilities?

What new can be done ?

The most powerful military in the history of humanity was unable to achieve a victory versus more determined but way less well equipped combattants. Irak and Afghanistan have proved again that morale is the major factor in wars. Light weapons, basic IEDs and RPGs were enough to hold balance. They were not even particularly relying on new information technologies: there were marginal technical innovation in IEDs (mostly to ignite explosions using cell phones etc.) and information sharing between guerrilla group (very much like social media for the jihadist).

It is true that the war in Gaza tells another story, but the goal of this war is totally different. Observe that there is no notion of front line in this particular war. The same happened in the north of Israel “front” with Hezbollah in Lebanon. I put front between quotation marks because here again there is no clear lines. Paradoxically—because it was an attack done by the stronger side of an asymmetrical conflict— the pager attack of September 2024 in Lebanon showed what good modern synchronization can achieve. The total mass of explosives used in this attack was only few grams per target but the results were massive and operated at different levels:

1. There were a couple of thousands of wounded people and 42 deaths.

2. There were very few collateral damage.

3. Hezbollah acquired greater paranoia towards communication than ever (it is their fear of being spied over electronic communications that made the whole operation possible in the first place).

4. It was the first move of a larger operation. It served to disorient Hezbollah’s management. A kind of modern version of artillery preparation.

But the most important point is that this operation was conducted without any notion of front line. It was not even similar to strikes in depth (the idea of depth is relative to the front line idea). It really looked like a ise of the percolation strategy that I was pointing to at the beginning of this post.

Now take the pager attack (or an equivalent) and add a total blackout on top of it, pepper it with infrastructure sabotage —cut wires here and there, almost 0 technology is needed, with a good coordination to provike cascading failure—and you have the backbone of a 0-day attack. A kind of modern version of pearl harbor attack where the information technologies and the weaponization of on the shelf products (from chemical products to drones passing by large systems like planes, trucks). One way to see it is to replace aircraft carriers silently progressing towards Hawaï with loads of migrants waiting to be activated.

It is relatively easy to design such scenarios of initial attacks. What is really hard is to imagine the possible follow ups. It is especially more complex when two nuclear states are involved: can you remain below the Armageddon threshold? If yes then what are the objectives of the war ? If no, then why do you start such actions in the first place ? Those questions are especially important in the context of a China vs USA war. Because no land invasion is in the realm of possibilities for both belligerents. When you think about those questions seriously you see another border appearing: the difference between war and peace is no longer as easy as it was the case.

Controlling the information highway

The last point that I am tackling with in this post is not clear in my head. Let’s go back to the first principles: what is the aim of war? For me, this at least is clear, it is the struggle between wills in the material world. I am not going to win an argument by talking, in war I am going to make the expression of your will in the world impossible. For most of our history it was clear: you put a guard with better weapons and kill the ones that would show signs of resistance. The idea of a front line is the reification of this idea: you are in control, I mean physical control, of what is behind the front line. You can use small amount of force to deal with problems. This is what we call “police”. It is very different from war. War is not a police operation on steroids. It is another thing. Now, as discussed before, the notion of front line are becoming more and more evanescent. It entails that the difference between peace and war is going to follow suit too. For instance can we say that the USA are already in a civil war? The case can be made, there are lot of political violence. It can takes “traditional expression” like Tesla bombing, arsons attacks , AntiFa demonstrations, murders and attempts to kill that are politically motivated. Those actions are reminders of standard kinetic warfare. But there are new fronts: for instance the judicial warfare (a glaring example amongst many is a judge statuing on how the military should be organized which is a prerogative of the executive), the refusal by many states to perform deportation of illegals etc. At the end of the day what is it if not war ? A president has just been elected and the will of the election is negated via the bureaucratic state. Of course you don’t have an armoured division rushing through the defenses of another country, but it doesn’t mean that there is no war raging on. If you don’t believe me check by yourselves, the list is here, the USA haven’t declared war since WWII. Yes you read it clearly…

Now where do you form your opinions and gather informations? On line? On social media? Here is your new front line. It is no longer a line, it is made by moving conversations. The “thing of the day”, ie the trends, are entangled and are used as weapons in order to affect your will. You don’t know it but you are already on the front line, maybe already fatally wounded.