The 20th century was all about hierarchies.
If you want to create something, if you want to start a country, create a product, whatever
it is.
Your goal is to create a highly efficient hierarchical model, scale it because that’s
what the competition’s doing.
And whoever does that the largest and with the most efficiency will eventually dominate
the market, will be the dominant country, however you want to look at it.
Everyone played some version of this game.
The 21st century is dominated by networks because the introduction of the information
age we can suddenly create free flow these globally distributed organic shaped networks
of individuals.
It’s a radically different environment for everyone.
That translates into any space that you can imagine really.
Everyone’s wrestling with some version of this because we grew up in the bureaucratic
model and so we’re trying to change not just the way we act but our psychology and
how we view the world.
And it’s going to change the battlefield as well.
You know it’s inevitable – the technology curve continues to grow exponentially.
One of the major areas we’re seeing that is the debate around unmanned vehicles.
So is a completely robotic battlefield out of the question at some point?
No, I think it’s out of the question not to think about that as a possible end state.
We’re so on the front edge of these debates that it’ll be laughable I imagine 100 years
from now.
But the fascinating part is if you look at the discussions around this type of technology
for the most part our nation states are still trying to solve it through their traditional
bureaucratic thinking.
How do I legislate for this?
What does it look like, et cetera, et cetera.
And there’s going to just be an exponential change in how this has the real effects on
the ground as the technology continues to grow.
So now we have, you know, a single predator type overhead aircraft, unmanned, that can
do, you know, X, Y, Z.
A very, very significant jump over the past 20 years.
Fast forward that 20 years and as the technology scale continues to increase exponentially
that could be a single aircraft that has a network of thousands around it that are real
time monitoring on the ground, in the air, buildings, whatever the case may be.
Where the technology is pushing conflict is moving so much faster than our systems ability
to adapt and regulate it that it’s going to be a real challenge for us the next ten
to 15 years.