Ukraine’s killing fields hold three big lessons for democracies regarding the technological transformation of conflict, says a special report from The Economist:
- The first is that the battlefield is becoming transparent. Forget binoculars or maps; think of all-seeing sensors on satellites and fleets of drones. Cheap and ubiquitous, they yield data for processing by ever-improving algorithms that can pick out needles from haystacks: the mobile signal of a Russian general, say, or the outline of a camouflaged tank. This information can then be relayed by satellites to the lowliest soldier at the front, or used to aim artillery and rockets with unprecedented precision and range….
- Even in the age of artificial intelligence, the second lesson is that war may still involve an immense physical mass of hundreds of thousands of humans, and millions of machines and munitions. Casualties in Ukraine have been severe: the ability to see targets and hit them precisely sends the body-count soaring. ….
- The third lesson—one that also applied for much of the 20th century—is that the boundary of a big war is wide and indistinct. …. In Ukraine civilians have been sucked into the war as victims—over 9,000 have died—but also participants: a provincial grandmother can help guide artillery fire through a smartphone app. …New boundaries create fresh problems. The growing participation of civilians raises legal and ethical questions….
For liberal societies the temptation is to step back from the horrors of Ukraine, and from the vast cost and effort of modernising their armed forces, The Economist adds:
Yet they cannot assume that such a conflict, between large industrialised economies, will be a one-off event. An autocratic and unstable Russia may pose a threat to the West for decades to come. China’s rising military clout is a destabilising factor in Asia, and a global resurgence of autocracy could make conflicts more likely.
