Creative Destruction comes to Warfare

Technological change and creative destruction is everywhere.  It’s changed the way we work, the way we interact with each other, the foundation of education, and not surprisingly the nature of warfare.

We’ve all seen the media images of drones giving us perfect images; the perfect eye in the sky for perfectly targeted air strikes.  As least that’s how it looks on Homeland, and 24 and the images for Abbottabad.

The reality however is somewhat different.  Less than clear images, imperfect targeting that kills civilians, increasingly complex and overpriced equipment and on the other hand, lower barriers to entry with respect to some drones, that will soon make them available to nations, groups or individuals everywhere.  Soon surveillance, and even "death from above," will be on a par with package delivery

It’s a scary future, one that Washington keeps pretty hidden,  and one that the Washington editor of Harpers,  Andrew Cockburn talks about in Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

My conversation with Andrew Cockburn: