War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
Encyclopedia
War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991) is a book by Manuel de Landa
that traces the history of warfare and of technology
. It is influenced in part by Michel Foucault
's Discipline and Punish
(1978), and also reinterprets the concepts of war machine
s and the machinic phylum, introduced in Deleuze
and Guattari's
A Thousand Plateaus
(1980). Deleuze & Guattari appreciated Foucault's definition of philosophy as a "tool box" that was to encourage thinking about new ideas. Thus, they themselves prepared the field for a reappropriation of their concepts, that is, a different use in another context of the "same" concept, which they also theorized under the name of "actualization". De Landa draws on concepts these authors put forth to investigate the history of warfare and technologies.
always needs to be inserted in social practices to become an effective technological innovation
. Deleuze and Guattari pointed out how the feudal assemblage
was composed of three heterogeneous components: the stirrup
, the lance
and the knight
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/deleuzeandguattari.htm. Technology is thus inserted in social practices, creating the specific war machine
of each social formation. "Tactical integration of new weapons has always been a lengthy process. Rifled firearms, for example, were available to hunters and duel
ists for over a century before they found their way into the war machine. The tactics
of most European armies were based on the volume of fire delivered rather than on the accuracy of individual shots." (p. 170) Manuel de Landa thus describes how social and economic formations influence the war machine, i.e. the form of armies
, according to each historical period. Quoting warfare historians, he thus shows, for example, how the Roman empire
created a phalanx
from a centralized state
, a political form not characteristic of the Greek
cities. Manuel de Landa draws on chaos theory
to show how the biosphere
reaches singularities
(or bifurcations
) which mark self-organization
thresholds where emergent properties are displayed, and claims that the "mecanosphere
", constituted by the machinic phylum, possesses similar qualities. Examples of such systems include the atmosphere
, the solar system
, plate tectonics
, turbulent fluids, economics
, and population growth
. Quoting Fernand Braudel
's meteorological
metaphor to Machiavelli's Italy
as a "low pressure area
", de Landa shows for example how a certain level of population growth may induce invasion
s and others wars. Population thus reaches a specific point where it changes nature: just as a solid
may be transformed into a liquid
if it reaches a specific singularity, which had to be traced by endless trials in the early creation of alloys — the point where two different metals, put together, become a new metal — this track has been refined by modern military engineers, who are supported by think tanks in their efforts.
As a historian, Manuel de Landa is thus indebted to Fernand Braudel's Annales School
and the study of long-scale historical phenomena, as opposed to human-scale phenomena. However, both authors are far from any technological determinism
, which would read history as the linear succession of technological progress. Like Foucault's "archeology", Manuel de Landa's philosophy of technology
leaves openings for various causal series which interfers together. But as in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
(1997), de Landa doesn't allow this perspective to justify any anthropocentrism
conception of history
, which would be centered on teleological
progress. Thus, instead of opposing the man
to the machine
as in classic philosophy, he plays on the interactions between the war machines and the machinic phylum. For example, he writes:
The next threshold point, or singularity, to be reached, according to de Landa, is the point where man and machine cease to oppose themselves, becoming one single war machine, and when that war machine itself is crossed by the machinic phylum — this last condition might be compared to Deleuze's call for the desiring molecular machines to use the social machines, instead of being composed and manipulated to form a complex molecular machine. The developments of artificial intelligence
, which will sooner or later lead to the creation of "predatory machines", that is intelligent machines. Even if "the advent of [truly autonomous weapons] may be quite far in the future, the will to endow machines with predatory capabilities has been institutionalized in the [US] military" (p. 128) warns de Landa. This disconnection of the war machines from the machinic phylum, of the military institution from the social formation, may result in erratic war machines that become nomads because of a lack of political control: if battles are not strategically ordered following political objectives, then even their victories become meaningless. In this specific case, the positive feedback
between the war machine and the machinic phylum is broken. Such positive feedback may be illustrated by the virtuous circle between the raising of tax
es, which permits funding for the creation of professional armies, used in monarchs' wars with other heads of state, but also used to maintain public order, and thus favoritizes economic growth
and supports the amelioration of current armies; a positive feedback seen by the mercantilism
movement). But an army that loses its political goals is doomed to permanently remain on the move, following rivers to survive off the territory it occupies: its sheer size forces it to nomadism. In this sense, nomadism may be considered as the failure of the war machine, which has become its own end in itself, disconnected from any social needs and energies. However, de Landa's warning against a certain military conception of technology and of warfare is not presented at all as a prophecy
that describes the future with fatalism
. Like some other critical theorists
, Manuel de Landa avoids the trap that would force one to choose between plain simple unilateral technological or economic determinism
(as in vulgar Marxism) and liberal
individualism
, which denies the existence of ideology
(a denegation that Althusser has demonstrated was itself ideologically founded).
Science fiction
may refer to this previsioned radical shift to autonomous warfare as a technological singularity
, although de Landa would probably argue that this singularity or bifurcation is yet another emergent property of the biosphere, which has led to the creation of a "mecanosphere" centered on the machinic phylum. In yet another passage, Manuel de Landa writes:
If "a same singularity may be said to trigger two very different self-organizing effects", neither technophobia
, as presented by Virilio
's work, or technophilia
are justified in themselves. Manuel de Landa demonstrates that de-centering history from a human perspective is not necessarily denying human freedom
, opposing himself to those who would argue, for example, that Louis Althusser
's explicit "antihumanism
" and insistence on Ideological State Apparatuses (I.S.A.) instead of on the universal and individual subject
would be a form of Marxism
opposed to the Enlightenment
's ideals.
command and control of each event on the battlefield, and get "human will out of the decision-making loop" or, to the contrary, they delegate responsibility
to individual
soldiers (e.g., platoons or the German mission-type tactics
) to avoid "friction". "Friction", according to de Landa, is like "noise
" — too much undispersed friction blocks the war machine, which destroys itself. Thus, rather than waiting for friction to accumulate at the head of the control, command and communication center (C3), which is the case in centralized armies, decentralized war machines allow it to disperse itself at each level of the machine.
The 1805 Jacquard loom
, which used the holes punched in pasteboard punched cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric, is the first example of a "migration" of human control to machines control, and marks the invention of software according to de Landa. Command and control
techniques adapted by the German were then introduced in army arsenal
s by Frederick Taylor
and extended to civilian society: "the imposition of military production methods into the civilian society was accompanied by the transfer of a whole command and control grid." (p. 153) The system of Numerical control
— and then the CNC — which was developed by funds from the US Air Force, "withdraws all control from workers in the area of weapons production and centralizes it at the top. But if the NC (and related methods) effectively shortened the chain of command be getting humans out of the decision-making loop, it also weakened the civilian sector of the economy by its adverse effects on workers' productivity," (p. 154) argues Manuel de Landa. He thus underlines that the US has become a net importer of machine tools for the first time since the 19th century, and points out that while in 1975 all major manufacturers of integrated chips were American, in 1986 only two were not Japan
ese. In 1982, the Japanese MITI
had launched the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS) initiative to create computers supposed to perform much calculation utilizing massive parallelism.
According to Manuel de Landa, the Prussian army was thus Jominian
, that it favored centralized command of the battlefield and the conduct of military affairs over diplomacy and politics. He opposes Clausewitz's classic theory exposed in On War
(1832) of the preeminence of politics over warfare (if strategy is the art of assembling battles, politics is the art of making sense of victories). Although Manuel de Landa doesn't quote Sun Tzu
, his use of Clausewitz recalls the Chinese's councils on the way to avoid wars as being the most effective warfare: one may be sure he won the war when actually the war didn't happen. Manuel de Landa claims that this Jominian theory influenced Prussian militarism
and, later, the RAND Corporation and current Pentagon
policies concerning research and development
. This centralization always aims at taking out humans from the decision-making loop, and is therefore closely linked to the evolution of technology — although a major thesis of Manuel de Landa's book is that evolution of technology in itself is not either good or bad, as technophiles and technophobes hope or fear. It may be used to keep the human will out of the loop, or, on the other hand, to prioritize cooperative behavior and decentralization: the classic example used is the hackers'
reappropriation of the military ARPANET
in the early ages of the Internet
.
Thus, the Schlieffen Plan
, formulated by the German general staff
after the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war
, is a good example of centralized war planning and of Jominian theory: everything was so rigidly planned that there was almost zero ability to adapt for sudden changes. When World War I
started in August 1914, the military told the emperor that they could do nothing but invade France, although the emperor changed his mind, hoping that if he didn't invade France, Great Britain
wouldn't enter the war (in virtue of the 1904 Entente cordiale
agreement). But the plan was too rigid and didn't allow for modification, thus potentially becoming one of the indirect causes of the war (although it surely wasn't the only one: de Landa, who begins his book quoting Fernand Braudel
, doesn't believe in unicausality or determinism
).
, invented in the early 19th century by Prussia
ns under the name of Kriegsspiel, has been used since that time for modelization of future battles, in particular by the general staff
, which may be considered the "institution
alized brain" of the armed forces
— until their substitution by think tank
s, the first one being the RAND Corporation, charged with the elaboration of science policy
in the frame of the military-industrial complex
. Frederick the Great was fascinated with automaton
s, as Foucault has shown, and with miniature wargames
. 19th century wargaming modelization, which benefited from the cartography
progress, was dependent on dice
s at the beginning to represent the effects of chaos. Eventually, these irrational conditions were taken out of the loop, as well as human will: current military wargames oppose computers, and not human beings. It was shown during the nuclear arms race
that human beings refused in game modelizations to cross the threshold and press the red button, which convinced military programers to take out human players.
De Landa distinguishes various "ages" of war machines (although they probably don't succeed each other in a simple way; Foucault and Deleuze likewise cast in doubt such historical linear succession); he also defines various "levels" of war machines (tactics
, strategy
and logistics
, which necessarily involve politics
).
Henceforth, describing the passage from the "clockwork
paradigm" to the "motor
paradigm", he quotes Michel Serres
's studies to demonstrate how this new paradigm led to the creation of an "abstract motor" composed of three components: a reservoir (steam in the case of the steam engine
), a form of exploitable difference (heat/cold difference) and a "diagram" or "program" for the exploitation of (thermal) differences. Michel Serres thus mentioned Darwin
, Marx
and Freud
as examples in the area of scientific discourse
:
Thus, Napoleon's armies, born from the 1789 French Revolution
, marked a new threshold of the machinic phylum, or singularities or bifurcation: emergent properties are displayed in this "evolution" from the "clockwork paradigm" to the "motor paradigm". This evolution is not merely technological; it is not so much the invention of the steam engine itself — the first type of motor — that determines this "evolution". Indeed, the first steam engine was invented through tinkering, and can thus not be said to be the consequences of a "paradigm shift
" as Thomas Kuhn
would conceive it. There is no necessary preeminence of science over technology (nor the reverse). Manuel de Landa thus explains that the "abstract motor" is more important than the "concrete motor" itself, taking as his example the dazzling victories during the Napoleonic Wars
:
Thus, Napoleon's true innovation is not in the implementation of the motor invention — he rejected the use of steamboats — but his use of the pool of energy formed by patriotism
, itself fuelled by the French Revolution
. This high morale
made conscription
possible; it also allowed more local initiative by and decentralization of the army, since French commanders didn't dread, as did their counterparts, endless cases of desertions if they allowed small groups of soldiers to take over specific missions.
De Landa also notes how von Neumann
was hired by the RAND Corporation to improve war exercises, which he did by devising game theory
, which helped The Pentagon
theorize nuclear strategy
. In particular, game theory was used to represent the Cold War
dualism
conflict as an instantiation of the Prisoner's dilemma
. Since the zero-sum fallacy wasn't yet theorized, this led to systemic bias
in favor of conflict against cooperative game
s, according to de Landa. Thus, the massive retaliation
nuclear strategy was chosen, although nuclear disarmament
would have been, in a more realistic win-win game
, the best solution. The Turing machines were also perfect "abstract machines" which would be implemented in concrete machines only later.
Manuel de Landa
Manuel De Landa, , is a writer, artist and philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is presently the Gilles Deleuze Chair of Contemporary Philosophy and Science at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland; a lecturer at the Canisius College in Buffalo, New York; a lecturer...
that traces the history of warfare and of technology
History of technology
The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist...
. It is influenced in part by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
's Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
(1978), and also reinterprets the concepts of war machine
War Machine
War Machine is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in comic books set in the Marvel Comics universe. The character of James Rhodes first appeared in Iron Man #118 by David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton...
s and the machinic phylum, introduced in Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
and Guattari's
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
A Thousand Plateaus
A Thousand Plateaus
A Thousand Plateaus is the second book of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the first being Anti-Oedipus. Written by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, it was translated into English by Brian Massumi...
(1980). Deleuze & Guattari appreciated Foucault's definition of philosophy as a "tool box" that was to encourage thinking about new ideas. Thus, they themselves prepared the field for a reappropriation of their concepts, that is, a different use in another context of the "same" concept, which they also theorized under the name of "actualization". De Landa draws on concepts these authors put forth to investigate the history of warfare and technologies.
A social history of technology and of warfare
An inventionInvention
An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...
always needs to be inserted in social practices to become an effective technological innovation
Innovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
. Deleuze and Guattari pointed out how the feudal assemblage
Assemblage
An assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artifacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context...
was composed of three heterogeneous components: the stirrup
Stirrup
A stirrup is a light frame or ring that holds the foot of a rider, attached to the saddle by a strap, often called a stirrup leather. Stirrups are usually paired and are used to aid in mounting and as a support while using a riding animal...
, the lance
Lance
A Lance is a pole weapon or spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior. The lance is longer, stout and heavier than an infantry spear, and unsuited for throwing, or for rapid thrusting. Lances did not have tips designed to intentionally break off or bend, unlike many throwing weapons of the...
and the knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/deleuzeandguattari.htm. Technology is thus inserted in social practices, creating the specific war machine
War Machine
War Machine is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in comic books set in the Marvel Comics universe. The character of James Rhodes first appeared in Iron Man #118 by David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton...
of each social formation. "Tactical integration of new weapons has always been a lengthy process. Rifled firearms, for example, were available to hunters and duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
ists for over a century before they found their way into the war machine. The tactics
Military tactics
Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
of most European armies were based on the volume of fire delivered rather than on the accuracy of individual shots." (p. 170) Manuel de Landa thus describes how social and economic formations influence the war machine, i.e. the form of armies
Army
An army An army An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
, according to each historical period. Quoting warfare historians, he thus shows, for example, how the Roman empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
created a phalanx
Phalanx formation
The phalanx is a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar weapons...
from a centralized state
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
, a political form not characteristic of the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
cities. Manuel de Landa draws on chaos theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
to show how the biosphere
Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...
reaches singularities
Technological singularity
Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
(or bifurcations
Bifurcation theory
Bifurcation theory is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations...
) which mark self-organization
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
thresholds where emergent properties are displayed, and claims that the "mecanosphere
Mécanosphère
Mécanosphère is a trans-national music/performance art group rooted in Portugal. Formed in 2003 by French drummer and DIY electronic musician Benjamin Brejon and polyglot Portuguese vocalist Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, frontman of cult Portuguese rockers Mão Morta , the morphing line-up of...
", constituted by the machinic phylum, possesses similar qualities. Examples of such systems include the atmosphere
Atmosphere
An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...
, the solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
, plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
, turbulent fluids, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, and population growth
Population growth
Population growth is the change in a population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals of any species in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....
. Quoting Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
's meteorological
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
metaphor to Machiavelli's Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
as a "low pressure area
Low pressure area
A low-pressure area, or "low", is a region where the atmospheric pressure at sea level is below that of surrounding locations. Low-pressure systems form under areas of wind divergence which occur in upper levels of the troposphere. The formation process of a low-pressure area is known as...
", de Landa shows for example how a certain level of population growth may induce invasion
Invasion
An invasion is a military offensive consisting of all, or large parts of the armed forces of one geopolitical entity aggressively entering territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the objective of either conquering, liberating or re-establishing control or authority over a...
s and others wars. Population thus reaches a specific point where it changes nature: just as a solid
Solid
Solid is one of the three classical states of matter . It is characterized by structural rigidity and resistance to changes of shape or volume. Unlike a liquid, a solid object does not flow to take on the shape of its container, nor does it expand to fill the entire volume available to it like a...
may be transformed into a liquid
Liquid
Liquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...
if it reaches a specific singularity, which had to be traced by endless trials in the early creation of alloys — the point where two different metals, put together, become a new metal — this track has been refined by modern military engineers, who are supported by think tanks in their efforts.
As a historian, Manuel de Landa is thus indebted to Fernand Braudel's Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
and the study of long-scale historical phenomena, as opposed to human-scale phenomena. However, both authors are far from any technological determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
, which would read history as the linear succession of technological progress. Like Foucault's "archeology", Manuel de Landa's philosophy of technology
Philosophy of technology
The philosophy of technology is a philosophical field dedicated to studying the nature of technology and its social effects.- History :Considered under the rubric of the Greek term techne , the philosophy of technology goes to the very roots of Western philosophy.* In his Republic, Plato sees...
leaves openings for various causal series which interfers together. But as in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History is a 1997 book by Manuel De Landa. The book forms part of DeLanda's ongoing project of applying dynamical systems theory and the like to such diverse fields as history, analytical science and realist philosophy, challenging prevailing paradigms in each instance...
(1997), de Landa doesn't allow this perspective to justify any anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism describes the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective....
conception of history
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...
, which would be centered on teleological
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
progress. Thus, instead of opposing the man
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...
to the machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
as in classic philosophy, he plays on the interactions between the war machines and the machinic phylum. For example, he writes:
The machinic phylum, seen as technology's own internal dynamics and cutting edge, could still be seen shining through the brilliant civilian discoveries of the transistorTransistorA transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
and the integrated chip, which had liberated electronic circuit designs from the constraints on their possible complexity. But the military had already begun to tighten its grip on the evolution of the phylum, on the events happening at its cutting edge, channeling its forces but limiting its potential mutations (p.153).
The next threshold point, or singularity, to be reached, according to de Landa, is the point where man and machine cease to oppose themselves, becoming one single war machine, and when that war machine itself is crossed by the machinic phylum — this last condition might be compared to Deleuze's call for the desiring molecular machines to use the social machines, instead of being composed and manipulated to form a complex molecular machine. The developments of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, which will sooner or later lead to the creation of "predatory machines", that is intelligent machines. Even if "the advent of [truly autonomous weapons] may be quite far in the future, the will to endow machines with predatory capabilities has been institutionalized in the [US] military" (p. 128) warns de Landa. This disconnection of the war machines from the machinic phylum, of the military institution from the social formation, may result in erratic war machines that become nomads because of a lack of political control: if battles are not strategically ordered following political objectives, then even their victories become meaningless. In this specific case, the positive feedback
Positive feedback
Positive feedback is a process in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A. In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is...
between the war machine and the machinic phylum is broken. Such positive feedback may be illustrated by the virtuous circle between the raising of tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
es, which permits funding for the creation of professional armies, used in monarchs' wars with other heads of state, but also used to maintain public order, and thus favoritizes economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
and supports the amelioration of current armies; a positive feedback seen by the mercantilism
Mercantilism
Mercantilism is the economic doctrine in which government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from...
movement). But an army that loses its political goals is doomed to permanently remain on the move, following rivers to survive off the territory it occupies: its sheer size forces it to nomadism. In this sense, nomadism may be considered as the failure of the war machine, which has become its own end in itself, disconnected from any social needs and energies. However, de Landa's warning against a certain military conception of technology and of warfare is not presented at all as a prophecy
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
that describes the future with fatalism
Fatalism
Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
. Like some other critical theorists
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, Manuel de Landa avoids the trap that would force one to choose between plain simple unilateral technological or economic determinism
Economic determinism
Economic determinism is the theory which attributes primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history. It is usually associated with the theories of Karl Marx, although many Marxist thinkers have dismissed plain and unilateral economic determinism as a form of...
(as in vulgar Marxism) and liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
, which denies the existence of ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
(a denegation that Althusser has demonstrated was itself ideologically founded).
Science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
may refer to this previsioned radical shift to autonomous warfare as a technological singularity
Technological singularity
Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
, although de Landa would probably argue that this singularity or bifurcation is yet another emergent property of the biosphere, which has led to the creation of a "mecanosphere" centered on the machinic phylum. In yet another passage, Manuel de Landa writes:
I defined the machinic phylum as the set of all the singularities at the onset of processes of self-organization — the critical points in the flow of matter and energy, points at which these flows spontaneously acquire a new form or pattern. All these processes, involving elements as different as molecules, cells or termites, may be represented by a few mathematical models. Thus, because one and the same singularity may be said to trigger two very different self-organizing effects, the singularity is said to be 'mechanism independent' (p.132)
If "a same singularity may be said to trigger two very different self-organizing effects", neither technophobia
Technophobia
Technophobia is the fear or dislike of advanced technology or complex devices, especially computers. tech·no·pho·bi·a n. Fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology. -Related forms: tech'no·phobe' n., tech'no·pho'bic adj."— "tech·no·pho·bi·a - Show Spelled...
, as presented by Virilio
Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....
's work, or technophilia
Technophilia
Technophilia refers generally to a strong enthusiasm for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones and home cinema...
are justified in themselves. Manuel de Landa demonstrates that de-centering history from a human perspective is not necessarily denying human freedom
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
, opposing himself to those who would argue, for example, that Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
's explicit "antihumanism
Antihumanism
Antihumanism is a term referring to a number of perspectives that are opposed to the project of philosophical anthropology...
" and insistence on Ideological State Apparatuses (I.S.A.) instead of on the universal and individual subject
Subject (philosophy)
In philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
would be a form of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
opposed to the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
's ideals.
Centralization and decentralization
According to de Landa, centralization and decentralization are two trends in the "war machine": either military commanders try to centralizeCentralization
Centralisation, or centralization , is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, become concentrated within a particular location and/or group....
command and control of each event on the battlefield, and get "human will out of the decision-making loop" or, to the contrary, they delegate responsibility
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
to individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
soldiers (e.g., platoons or the German mission-type tactics
Mission-type tactics
Mission-type tactics , have been a central component of the tactics of German armed forces since the 19th century. The term Auftragstaktik was coined by opponents of the development of mission-type tactics...
) to avoid "friction". "Friction", according to de Landa, is like "noise
Noise
In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital electronics, noise is random unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a generalisation of the acoustic noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission with significant electrical noise...
" — too much undispersed friction blocks the war machine, which destroys itself. Thus, rather than waiting for friction to accumulate at the head of the control, command and communication center (C3), which is the case in centralized armies, decentralized war machines allow it to disperse itself at each level of the machine.
The 1805 Jacquard loom
Jacquard loom
The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row...
, which used the holes punched in pasteboard punched cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric, is the first example of a "migration" of human control to machines control, and marks the invention of software according to de Landa. Command and control
Command and Control (military)
Command and control, or C2, in a military organization can be defined as the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission...
techniques adapted by the German were then introduced in army arsenal
Arsenal
An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, issued to authorized users, or any combination of those...
s by Frederick Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
and extended to civilian society: "the imposition of military production methods into the civilian society was accompanied by the transfer of a whole command and control grid." (p. 153) The system of Numerical control
Numerical control
Numerical control refers to the automation of machine tools that are operated by abstractly programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to controlled manually via handwheels or levers, or mechanically automated via cams alone...
— and then the CNC — which was developed by funds from the US Air Force, "withdraws all control from workers in the area of weapons production and centralizes it at the top. But if the NC (and related methods) effectively shortened the chain of command be getting humans out of the decision-making loop, it also weakened the civilian sector of the economy by its adverse effects on workers' productivity," (p. 154) argues Manuel de Landa. He thus underlines that the US has become a net importer of machine tools for the first time since the 19th century, and points out that while in 1975 all major manufacturers of integrated chips were American, in 1986 only two were not Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese. In 1982, the Japanese MITI
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry was one of the most powerful agencies of the Government of Japan. At the height of its influence, it effectively ran much of Japanese industrial policy, funding research and directing investment...
had launched the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS) initiative to create computers supposed to perform much calculation utilizing massive parallelism.
According to Manuel de Landa, the Prussian army was thus Jominian
Antoine-Henri Jomini
Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini was a general in the French and later in the Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war...
, that it favored centralized command of the battlefield and the conduct of military affairs over diplomacy and politics. He opposes Clausewitz's classic theory exposed in On War
On War
Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz , written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It has been translated into English several times as On War...
(1832) of the preeminence of politics over warfare (if strategy is the art of assembling battles, politics is the art of making sense of victories). Although Manuel de Landa doesn't quote Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu
Sun Wu , style name Changqing , better known as Sun Tzu or Sunzi , was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher who is traditionally believed, and who is most likely, to have authored The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy...
, his use of Clausewitz recalls the Chinese's councils on the way to avoid wars as being the most effective warfare: one may be sure he won the war when actually the war didn't happen. Manuel de Landa claims that this Jominian theory influenced Prussian militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
and, later, the RAND Corporation and current Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
policies concerning research and development
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
. This centralization always aims at taking out humans from the decision-making loop, and is therefore closely linked to the evolution of technology — although a major thesis of Manuel de Landa's book is that evolution of technology in itself is not either good or bad, as technophiles and technophobes hope or fear. It may be used to keep the human will out of the loop, or, on the other hand, to prioritize cooperative behavior and decentralization: the classic example used is the hackers'
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
reappropriation of the military ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
in the early ages of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Thus, the Schlieffen Plan
Schlieffen Plan
The Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's early 20th century overall strategic plan for victory in a possible future war in which the German Empire might find itself fighting on two fronts: France to the west and Russia to the east...
, formulated by the German general staff
German General Staff
The German General Staff was an institution whose rise and development gave the German armed forces a decided advantage over its adversaries. The Staff amounted to its best "weapon" for nearly a century and a half....
after the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
, is a good example of centralized war planning and of Jominian theory: everything was so rigidly planned that there was almost zero ability to adapt for sudden changes. When World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
started in August 1914, the military told the emperor that they could do nothing but invade France, although the emperor changed his mind, hoping that if he didn't invade France, Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
wouldn't enter the war (in virtue of the 1904 Entente cordiale
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent...
agreement). But the plan was too rigid and didn't allow for modification, thus potentially becoming one of the indirect causes of the war (although it surely wasn't the only one: de Landa, who begins his book quoting Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
, doesn't believe in unicausality or determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
).
Wargaming and game theory
Manuel de Landa also shows how wargamingWargaming
A wargame is a strategy game that deals with military operations of various types, real or fictional. Wargaming is the hobby dedicated to the play of such games, which can also be called conflict simulations, or consims for short. When used professionally to study warfare, it is generally known as...
, invented in the early 19th century by Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
ns under the name of Kriegsspiel, has been used since that time for modelization of future battles, in particular by the general staff
General Staff
A military staff, often referred to as General Staff, Army Staff, Navy Staff or Air Staff within the individual services, is a group of officers and enlisted personnel that provides a bi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer and subordinate military units...
, which may be considered the "institution
Institution
An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community...
alized brain" of the armed forces
Armed forces
The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...
— until their substitution by think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
s, the first one being the RAND Corporation, charged with the elaboration of science policy
Science policy
Science policy is an area of public policy concerned with the policies that affect the conduct of the science and research enterprise, including the funding of science, often in pursuance of other national policy goals such as technological innovation to promote commercial product development,...
in the frame of the military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
. Frederick the Great was fascinated with automaton
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
s, as Foucault has shown, and with miniature wargames
Miniature wargaming
Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming that incorporates miniature figures, miniature armor and modeled terrain as the main components of play...
. 19th century wargaming modelization, which benefited from the cartography
Cartography
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:*Set the map's...
progress, was dependent on dice
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...
s at the beginning to represent the effects of chaos. Eventually, these irrational conditions were taken out of the loop, as well as human will: current military wargames oppose computers, and not human beings. It was shown during the nuclear arms race
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...
that human beings refused in game modelizations to cross the threshold and press the red button, which convinced military programers to take out human players.
De Landa distinguishes various "ages" of war machines (although they probably don't succeed each other in a simple way; Foucault and Deleuze likewise cast in doubt such historical linear succession); he also defines various "levels" of war machines (tactics
Military tactics
Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...
, strategy
Military strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
and logistics
Logistics
Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...
, which necessarily involve politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
).
Henceforth, describing the passage from the "clockwork
Clockwork
A clockwork is the inner workings of either a mechanical clock or a device that operates in a similar fashion. Specifically, the term refers to a mechanical device utilizing a complex series of gears....
paradigm" to the "motor
Engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert energy into useful mechanical motion. Heat engines, including internal combustion engines and external combustion engines burn a fuel to create heat which is then used to create motion...
paradigm", he quotes Michel Serres
Michel Serres
Michel Serres is a French philosopher and author, celebrated for his unusual career.-Life and career:...
's studies to demonstrate how this new paradigm led to the creation of an "abstract motor" composed of three components: a reservoir (steam in the case of the steam engine
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
), a form of exploitable difference (heat/cold difference) and a "diagram" or "program" for the exploitation of (thermal) differences. Michel Serres thus mentioned Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
as examples in the area of scientific discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
:
reservoirs of population, of capital or of unconscious desires, put to work by the use of differences of fitness, class or sex, each following a procedure directing the circulation of naturally selected species, or commodities and labor, or symptoms and fantasies... (p.141)
Thus, Napoleon's armies, born from the 1789 French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, marked a new threshold of the machinic phylum, or singularities or bifurcation: emergent properties are displayed in this "evolution" from the "clockwork paradigm" to the "motor paradigm". This evolution is not merely technological; it is not so much the invention of the steam engine itself — the first type of motor — that determines this "evolution". Indeed, the first steam engine was invented through tinkering, and can thus not be said to be the consequences of a "paradigm shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
" as Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
would conceive it. There is no necessary preeminence of science over technology (nor the reverse). Manuel de Landa thus explains that the "abstract motor" is more important than the "concrete motor" itself, taking as his example the dazzling victories during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
:
Napoleon himself did not incorporate the motor as a technical object into his war machine (as mentioned, he explicitly rejected the use of steamboats), but the abstract motor did affect the mode of assemblage of the Napoleonic armies: "motorized" armies were the first to make use of a reservoir of loyal human bodies, to insert these bodies into a flexible calculusCalculusCalculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...
(nonlinear tactics), and to exploit the friend/foe difference to take warfare from clockwork dynastic duels to massive confrontations between nations. (p.141)
Thus, Napoleon's true innovation is not in the implementation of the motor invention — he rejected the use of steamboats — but his use of the pool of energy formed by patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
, itself fuelled by the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. This high morale
Morale
Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used to describe the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others...
made conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
possible; it also allowed more local initiative by and decentralization of the army, since French commanders didn't dread, as did their counterparts, endless cases of desertions if they allowed small groups of soldiers to take over specific missions.
De Landa also notes how von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
was hired by the RAND Corporation to improve war exercises, which he did by devising game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
, which helped The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
theorize nuclear strategy
Nuclear strategy
Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends...
. In particular, game theory was used to represent the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
conflict as an instantiation of the Prisoner's dilemma
Prisoner's dilemma
The prisoner’s dilemma is a canonical example of a game, analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W...
. Since the zero-sum fallacy wasn't yet theorized, this led to systemic bias
Systemic bias
Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to favor particular outcomes. The term is a neologism that generally refers to human systems; the analogous problem in non-human systems is often called systematic bias, and leads to systematic error in measurements or estimates.-Bias in...
in favor of conflict against cooperative game
Cooperative game
In game theory, a cooperative game is a game where groups of players may enforce cooperative behaviour, hence the game is a competition between coalitions of players, rather than between individual players...
s, according to de Landa. Thus, the massive retaliation
Massive retaliation
Massive retaliation, also known as a massive response or massive deterrence, is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack.-Strategy:...
nuclear strategy was chosen, although nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....
would have been, in a more realistic win-win game
Win-win game
A win-win game is a game which is designed in a way that all participants can profit from it in one way or the other. In conflict resolution, a win-win strategy is a conflict resolution process that aims to accommodate all disputants.-Types:...
, the best solution. The Turing machines were also perfect "abstract machines" which would be implemented in concrete machines only later.
See also
- Artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
and Revolution in Military AffairsRevolution in Military AffairsThe military concept of Revolution in Military Affairs is a theory about the future of warfare, often connected to technological and organizational recommendations for change in the United States military and others....
(RMA) - Charles BabbageCharles BabbageCharles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...
(1791–1871) - ENIACENIACENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
and Colossus computerColossus computerNot to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
, the first "universal machines" or "true Turing machines", invented during World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis... - DARPADefense Advanced Research Projects AgencyThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...
created in 1958 following the 1957 launching of Sputnik, which developed the ARPANETARPANETThe Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet... - Maurice of NassauMaurice of Nassau, Prince of OrangeMaurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange was sovereign Prince of Orange from 1618, on the death of his eldest half brother, Philip William, Prince of Orange,...
- Self-organizationSelf-organizationSelf-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
- History of technologyHistory of technologyThe history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist...
- History of warfare
- Vannevar BushVannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
(1890–1974), who directed the Office of Scientific Research and DevelopmentOffice of Scientific Research and DevelopmentThe Office of Scientific Research and Development was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by on June 28, 1941...
responsible of the Manhattan ProjectManhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army... - Technological singularityTechnological singularityTechnological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
- Wilhelm StieberWilhelm StieberWilhelm Johann Carl Eduard Stieber was Otto von Bismarck's master spy and director of the Prussian Feldgendarmerie. Stieber was both an agent of domestic surveillance and an external agent...
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- Manuel de LandaManuel de LandaManuel De Landa, , is a writer, artist and philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is presently the Gilles Deleuze Chair of Contemporary Philosophy and Science at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland; a lecturer at the Canisius College in Buffalo, New York; a lecturer...
, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, New York: Zone Books, 1991, 280 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-942299-76-0; Paperback, ISBN 0-942299-75-2.