Three years ago, I speculated in my blog that fairly low-tech unmanned aircraft, UAVs, or drones could defeat very expensive missile systems after a giant Saudi oil facility was attacked with high precision causing enough damage to reduce the global oil supply. Even though there was a missile defense system in place, the attack came from a swarm of small low-flying drones and cruise missiles that defeated the existing missile defense system.
I called for an increased emphasis on defense against this type of attack, and since then, there have been many worldwide new programs focused on developing this kind of threat as well as new defense systems. The recent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and the Ukraine attacks against Russian air bases appear to be a demonstration of what I expected, namely a fundamental change in offense and defense.
I pointed out in my post that swarms of such weapons to surprise and exhaust even the most competent defenses could mark a radical change in warfighting. I wrote that “drones could target critical parts of the exposed grid, disperse biological agents, target crowds at sports events, or even parking lots of shopping centers.” Unfortunately, my worst fears have come to pass with the Russians targeting the cities and critical infrastructure of Ukraine. Now Ukraine has struck back, and the nastiness is only going to be even nastier with more attacks from both sides. The balloon has gone up. But wait there’s more. The latest Ukraine innovation is drone killer boats backed up by flying drones to find and strike targets at sea. So the air, sea, and space application of killer drones is going to be the new way of war. But where there are new weapons, there are certain to be new counter-weapons.
With the development of fiber laser weapons with a power level of tens to hundreds of kilowatts, a realistic defense against drone swarms is possible if the tracking, pointing, and fire control system works reliably, and if the power supply is of an ample duration, and if enough of such defense system could become an affordable deployment … and of course, the weather cooperates. Boeing has created “an anti-drone death ray truck” that may defeat the ifs, but there are a lot of ifs and as usual, the offense is already a step ahead of the defense.
What about those new all-weather high-power microwave weapons such as the Ratheon Phaser to attack the controls and brains of the drones so that they become dumb rocks instead of brilliant pebbles? High-power microwave weapons are being developed by many countries and they will be important. This will be a story of brains versus beams, and the details will be written as the old game of offense versus defense is repeated again and again. In any case, there is no question that the game has begun and when new technology is created, people will find a way to apply that technology to warfighting.
An eventual development could be the proliferation of low-cost killer drones, and they could become the weapon of choice for ground forces, law enforcement, and maybe terrorists or even your neighborhood crazy guys who already are using weapons developed for the military. It is likely that such killer drones will initially be under the control of an operator, but quite possibly in a few years, they will be employed using artificial intelligence to search out and target predetermined targets when they are recognized by the smart sensor on the killer drones.
Survival of soldiers and military surface systems is possible if they can move, hide, defend, and shoot back, but there is not going to be a so-called “last move” in this contest of energy weapons versus drones. There may have to be an eventual change in the tactics of all surface warfare. It could be just too dangerous for high-value targets to try to survive above ground. Maybe survival would be achieved by deploying in tunnels and caves. But what about drone swarms used by terrorists against civilian targets? A logical step would be to ban such weapons, but we have not done this with assault rifles. Instead, children are trained to respond to an active shooter in their schools. I wonder if children will have to return to “duck and cover” when sensors detect a killer drone swarm approaching their playground?
It occurred to me that since our nation’s 300th birthday party is just over 50 years away, it is not too early to speculate about what things might be like in the future. I thought one way to go about this speculation would be to go back 50 years and consider the thinking about the future at that time, and then project forward into 50 years in the future. The issues I considered were the subjects that are very prominent in current concerns and worries: global climate, the economy, science and technology and war. My goal in this exercise in speculation is to encourage others to join in and share ideas and help us all think more clearly about preparing for the future.
So, let’s turn the page back 50 years. The climate was a serious source or worry in the 1970s. I remember that in my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, where my parents still lived, the blizzard of January 1977 hit. The high winds and rapidly dropping temperatures suddenly swept across Ohio. On Jan. 28, the temperature dropped from 20 degrees to 10 below zero during the day, and wind gusts of 60 mph created huge drifts and zero visibility. Stores, factories and the government facilities were closed. The National Guard was called out to rescue hundreds and carry them to safety.
In the 70s, it was an accepted reality that the world was getting colder. A widely publicized article in “Newsweek” magazine captured the thinking at that time. The story complained about the “most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded … and fundamental changes in the world’s weather” and claimed that “after three quarters of a century of extraordinary mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down … climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action.” The author was right about the lack of political action, since the inclement weather was often temporary and people forgot about temporary shivers and went back to a normal life. In fact that period was followed by a warming trend that continues to this day and there was no political action of any kind.
As many sources of data reveal, there has been a rise in temperature of roughly 0.5 degrees centigrade in the last 50 years. If that trend continues, another increase of 0.5 degrees would be a reasonable assumption of a continuation of the trend with no prediction of a catastrophic result caused by burning fossil fuels. To the non-expert observer like me, a continuation of the past trend seems reasonable. But according to the “climate experts,” if greenhouse gasses continue to rise at the present rate, the global temperature will increase by another 2 or even 3 degrees and the result will be “an existential threat to human civilization.” A contrarian view was presented by Steve Koonin, who I have known over the years and I consider to be a reputable scientist. His book “Unsettled” considers multiple climate drivers and presents the case that warming is not necessarily caused by human burning of fossil fuels.
Although I agree with that a large increase in global temperature would be catastrophic, my opinion is that the global climate is so complex that predictions about the future are not credible. What the data has convinced me is that for the last 40 years, the global temperature has shown oscillations of a fraction of a degree every few years. I expect that to continue. It is likely that as warming continues, the available energy in the environment and both the frequency and consequences of extreme weather occurrences will increase. I am certain that there are many coupled nonlinear climate processes with many feedback loops that lead to these oscillations and short term violent weather phenomena. This complexity makes predictions unreliable and calls for the need for more data in order to generate scientifically valid computer simulations.
So for now, my prediction is there will be a continuation of large oscillations with a slow increase in temperature, and that political leaders will have little effect on the outcome. Nevertheless, politicians will continue to take advantage of the media to modify public opinion in order to impact the investment in sources of energy. For practical reasons, however, the economy will nevertheless continue to rely on fossil fuels for practically everything we do.
There are many politicians using the fear of the “coming climate catastrophe” to strengthen their support. I expect that the combination of fear of the “future disaster” and greed for new sources of political power and profits will lead to many new investments that may impact on the economy over a long period of time, but I don’t expect any big changes based on climate running amok. The one thing that seems likely is that just as there are many nonlinear variables that are important in climate. This multiplicity of variables is also true with the economy, which is also driven by the nonlinear effects of human behavior including fear and greed that can result in large oscillations. Too much of a good thing is going to always lead to an overreaction followed by a correction, but the economy will eventually smooth out the oscillations and a slow and steady increase in economic health will continue. So in 50 years, because of the flexibility and freedom in our economy as well as checks and balances in our political system, there will be self-corrections and modifications in investments leading to a general improvement in the health, welfare and wealth of the average American.
The sources of energy are liable to follow the market forces that will continue to support investments in fossil fuels without any major changes. I predict there will be increased investments in small modular nuclear reactors for remote applications and to supplement the grid to deal with climate oscillations assuming the problems of nuclear waste disposal will be solved.
But what about the revolutionary changes caused by the deployment of the clean, cheap, safe inexhaustible fusion power sources that have always been “only 20 years in the future”? It is often said that the 20 year prediction will always be true, and I agree with that. There may be a method to use fusion as a method for a safe and low cost way to treat nuclear waste, but this will require a new discovery of a practical, affordable and reliable fusion reactor, and that seems unluckily even though scientists and engineers will claim frequent breakthroughs to keep the continuation of funding. The most likely application of fusion, assuming many of the material survival problems are solved, is likely to be in combination with a growing reliance on small modular nuclear reactors. I, however, see the real 50-year advances from science will not be with things but with people.
In the next 50 years, I believe there will be real changes in the science and technology in regard to the way people think, learn, remember and behave. This will happen because we will learn how to measure in detail how the brain works, create computer simulations of those data and learn how to use electrical neuro technology to enhance the brain features we like and discourage the features that are not so useful. In a previous post about “brain zapping,” I explained that the key will be brain wave entrainment using closed loop feedback control to improve the single most important problem us old folks will face–the deterioration of brain function with age. Rather than advances in use of drugs to deal with neurological problems, I believe that brain treatment and enhancement will be electrical, and productive lifelong learning and contributions to society will dominate health and welfare. We will have to learn to accept a lot of really smart old people making decisions and running things.
The danger in such a successful widespread use of brain enhancement will be the problem of addiction to these methods and misuse that are likely to occur, so we need to prepare for not just the benefits of enhanced brain functions, but the need for controls that will have to be provided by our methods of government. As long as the government is honest, fair and well behaved, the use of brain enhancement should be primarily beneficial … except bad actors may emerge and lead to conflict, and the deployment of brain weapons will be a problem of new and dangerous methods of war.
As I explained in my post, “The Fallacy of the Last Move,” there will always be people who use fear and greed to create an arms race, and this will include brain weapons and counter brain weapons. This could lead to a real, not an artificial catastrophe, and there will need to be societal agreements to limit the undesirable aspects of brain enhancement. I think the benefits to society will be so great that wisdom will emerge and prevent future brain wars.
But I guess there will be other ways to wage wars based on infection of people and computer software. It is likely that there will continue to be both natural variations of airborne viruses and eventually their use in military actions. This will result in the deployment of facility and human sensors along with vaccines to manage the spread of disease. Computer software will continue to be hacked by criminals, but my concern is the self-evolution of computer viruses as a result of automated software created methods. Maybe Hal will tell us, “I am sorry Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.” What do you think? Comment with your predictions for 2076.
What if Trump had succeeded in overthrowing the election?
Former President Donald Trump apparently was totally dedicated to being declared the winner of the 2020 election, and he might have been successful if he had been able to persuade a number of members of our elected and appointed government organizations to go along with his plan. It is conceivable that the result would have been a rejection of the election results and the emergence of an unworkable form of government leading to political, social and economic chaos. The extreme forces on the liberal and conservative sides of the social and political spectrum might have launched a power struggle that could also involve military forces to enforce some sort of an interim government approach. It seems rather hard to believe that a world economic and military power with the ability to launch a nuclear war could totally lose control of its fundamental decision making and management abilities, but this would not have been the first time this has happened, and it would be useful to consider a little history lesson.
Some describe the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol as an attempt to overthrow the government.
On Aug. 20, 1991, the Soviet government was preparing to sign a treaty that would have changed the relationship between the central government and the republics of the Soviet Union. The force behind this agreement was Mikhail Gorbachev, the man in charge, who along with a group of loyal followers wanted to change just about everything. He was in the process of creating a new form of government that he had been working on since 1985, and his goal was an entirely new economic and military approach.
The 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt, also known as the August Coup, was a failed attempt by hardliners of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party to forcibly seize control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party at the time.
Gorbachev envisioned a non-militaristic, non-autocratic, and globalistic liberal form of government driven by an entrepreneurial spirit like most of the rest of the world. He was convinced that the old Communist approach was doomed to failure. At the same time, he harbored the concept that he could preserve Communism in some form, but he was not too clear on that. He knew that the constant drain of funds to support all of the poor and gradually getting more poor republics would lead to inevitable failure of the government, and he was prepared to turn the dependent client states loose to fend for themselves. He had tried all sorts of approaches to turning around his country and one of his schemes was to end rampant alcoholism without considering that it was a major source of income to run the government, and this decision just added to the increasing economic woes.
The Soviet leader also was convinced that the military industrial complex was a major cause of economic disaster and he did everything he could do to derail attempts to spend increasing funds on defense in general and space weapons in particular. His goal was not only conventional disarmament, but also the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Strangely enough, there was at least one other person in the world that agreed with the nuclear part of his plan, and that was President Reagan, but that is a different story, so back to the overthrow.
A group of eight high-level Soviet officials put together a plan to take over the government and put a stop to any treaty that would lead to the end of the Soviet Union. They waited until it was almost too late and they did not really think through how exactly they would manage to run their new government. Nevertheless, with only two days to go, five of them showed up at Gorbachev’s vacation home in Crimea. Their plan was to convince him to sign an emergency declaration that put would put them in charge of the government.
One of the most important participants in this coup was Oleg Baklanov, the head of the military industrial complex and a man dedicated to restoring the global space leadership that they had demonstrated beginning with Sputknik in 1957. He believed that the Soviets had managed to let the Americans take over with the latest move being Reagan’s SDI that he believed could easily be handled if he were allowed to get on with running the show. He was convinced that he knew how to win this latest form of technical competition and his approach was to develop and deploy their own death star, called Polyus, which would control space. The only issue was that Polyus had crashed into the Pacific after its launch in 1987, but only because of a minor software glitch, and Baklanov was not ready to give up on his engineer’s technology approach to problem-solving.
Baklanov had a running battle with Gorbachev and tried to persuade Gorbachev that he really had a better idea based on the superior scientific and engineering capabilities of the military R&D branches of the government. After many attempts to get his way, he concluded that Gorbachev cared little and barely understood the miracles of Soviet technology and was driven by his own political philosophy. Baklanov thought at least half of the military technical advantages were already devoted to the non-military needs and were best managed by stepping up military spending rather than somehow turning over the economy to a free and non-governmental form of big business.
When the coup plotters confronted Gorbachev, Baklanov later claimed in his oral history that Gorbachev “was dressed in a sweater although it was hot outside … to emphasize that he really was sick … became rather emotional and I saw a dull man thinking in a dull way about himself, rather than the matter at hand … and said he would sign the treaty even if they cut off my legs.”
The plotters left without any agreement and headed back to Moscow to “make arrangements” including getting Boris Yeltsin to go along with their plan, but that was not to be. When Gorbachev returned to Moscow few days later still wearing that same sweater, he found that the coup plotters had ordered tanks and military to take over and enforce their coup. Yeltsin then called on the public to strike and protest the coup. Yeltsin climbed on a tank, and with a megaphone and demanded the coup be defeated, and when the military refused to fire on the crowds, the coup was essentially over in three days and the plotters were arrested. Some spent time in prison but were released after an amnesty was declared in 1994. Gorbachev’s chief military adviser who had signed up with the coup committed suicide when it failed. An active coup plotter, Boris Pugo, along with his wife also took their own lives.
Gorbachev agreed with Yeltsin to abolish the Communist party, and in December the hammer and sickle flag was lowered, but then what? What was the outcome of a new freedom with lots of influence from the West? It is reported that without the law and order of the old government, the mafia that had been created when Gorbachev got rid of vodka took over and a new approach to big business emerged with oligarchs in charge.
Russian President Vladimer Putin poses for photos riding on horseback while shirtless.
Violent uprisings were not uncommon, and the government went into a multiyear economic and social collapse. Then Putin, with his KGB backing, rode shirtless on his horse to the rescue in 1999 by restoring law and order and increasing autocratic control. Putin believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” His attempt to regain control of the Soviet republics has resulted in today’s rapidly evolving war in the Ukraine, and a renewal of the conflict between the West and Russia with consequences yet to be determined.
So what did I conclude from all of this history story? Certainly we are not Russia, and we have resilient institutions that work well under stress. Not surprisingly, I believe an orderly transition of power that reflects the will of the governed is a rather good idea. When the rule of law and reasonable people make the transition decisions in a cooperative manner, it is better than a disorderly overthrow of the government. Had it happened here, we might have seen the lessons of Soviet history revisited on our own shores.
SDI Guy 