Physics of the Future and Force Structure

I've just finished Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future.  In this work, Kaku describes the state of science, technology, and engineering in the areas of computation, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, space travel, the meaning of wealth, and the future of human civilization.  He then extends this discussion to speculate on the shape of each discipline and the consequences for life and civilization in the long (2070-2100), mid (2030-2070), and near (present to 2030) terms.

I don't want to dwell on the aspects of Kaku's work that bother me, but I can't resist (very) briefly touching on a few.  

• I'm always a little troubled by the inveterate optimism of some folks (especially those with an unshakable faith in science to make the world better).  This is some of my own pessimism and misanthropy coming through, so my judgement should come with a grain of salt.  I'm not asking for dystopic visions of the future, but Kaku is really unbalanced in his approach.
• My teeth always start to ache when physicists start talking about international relations, psychology, economics and other fields in which they are (at best) dilettantes.  (To be fair, I'm similarly troubled when experts in international relations betray their misunderstanding of science.)  Kaku has a lot to say on these subjects and the pedigree of his conclusions sets off alarms in my little dilettante brain.
• Kaku completely ignores a fundamental aspect of human interaction--war.  (Of course, my calling this element of human interaction fundamental betrays my Hobbesian outlook, but "to thine own self be true.")  This gap is filled, to an extent, by others.  (E.g., The Next 100 Years: A Forecast of the 21st Century by George Friedman is a nice look at the interaction of technology, social change, geopolitics, and war.  Robert Kaplan does some of the same things, though with a lens that doesn't seek to see quite so far.  Etc.)  I just wish a survey of science as wide-ranging as Kaku's touched on military science as well.  (Discursive aside...I think it bears mentioning that any discipline using "science" as a noun modified by some discipline-related word--in a quest for the illusion of rigor that only comes from science in our post-enlightenment minds--will never be an actual science.  Just saying.) 

It's this last that brings me to the reason for my post here.  (The questions that follow are not new, I suppose, but in the interest "read, think, write"...)  What are the implications of the radical changes Kaku foresees and military science, warfare, and therefore the force structures we project and for which we plan?  These changes include: quantum leaps in expert heuristics and expert systems enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and computation; widespread use of driver-less cars, with implications for all sorts of remotely piloted, semi-autonomous, and autonomous vehicles; nano-machines performing medical miracles (and, as Kaku does not note, acting as weapons); profound changes in sources of energy (including the side-effect of nuclear proliferation); expansion of space programs (manned and unmanned...with implications for the military domain, something not noted by Kaku); etc.  Note that he predicts these changes in the near term (by 2030), the first period of his speculation (the mid and late century predictions are much more extreme); this period obviously falls squarely in line with our Air Force long-range force structure timelines.

So...1) Can we meaningfully incorporate these speculations into force structure analysis?  2) Should we do so?  3) If so, how would such speculative force structure analysis work?

Merf

The Revenge of Geography

This post is a perhaps a bit outside the norm for an analysis forum--depending, I suppose, on how one defines "discussions in the analysis realm"--but I just finished reading Robert Kaplan's most recent book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Is About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, and I couldn't resist sharing.  (If the urge to read the full work doesn't consume you, an article length treatment published in Foreign Policy is available here.)

Amazon summarizes the book as building "on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene."  These great geographers and geopolitical thinkers include people to admire (Sir Halford Mackinder whose Democratic Ideals and Reality should be required reading for every policy analyst; Alfred Thayer Mahan; Sir Julian Corbett; Nicholas Spykman, etc.) and some, such as Karl Haushofer, the geopolitician of Nazism, for whom the opposite sentiment will dominate.  This is a fairly long-winded way of saying that the first half of Kaplan's work is very much a book-report regurgitating the ideas of others.  While I happen to prefer reading the primary sources (see the seminal strategic works of Mahan and Corbett, for example, that are available online here and here through the genius of Project Gutenberg) Kaplan's summary is worth reading as an introduction.  With this introduction then in hand...

..the second half of the book then applies the principles of geopolitics to Europe, Russia, China, India, Iran, the rest of the Middle East and the former Ottoman Empire, and to the relationship between the United States and Mexico.  It's almost as if the rest of the book is a prelude to the central point Kaplan wishes to make regarding U.S. grand strategy vis-a-vis our "failing" neighbor to the south.  (This last comes with shades of George Friedman's work in The Next 100 Years, and makes one wonder if Kaplan's STRATFOR connection is showing through.)  This discussion addresses the geopolitical motives for each of the regions and states described, illuminates the geopolitical seams along which conflict may concentrate, and makes implicit and explicit suggestions regarding U.S. policy based on these geopolitical discussions.

So, why do I offer all this up?  First, it's refreshing to see the unfairly maligned--and, in my opinion, very powerful--discipline of geopolitics given a hearing, especially from a voice likely to resonate in policy circles.  Second, in the world of force structure analysis (the world in which I was analytically raised) these issues seem to matter a great deal.  Identifying the potential (dare one say likely?) contexts and causes of future conflict matters in determinations of force posture (e.g., the pivot to Asia that we're not supposed to call a pivot), basing, capability requirements, etc., has obvious value in my little world.  These questions can be viewed absent considerations of geopolitics, of course, but the additional rigorous analytic lens these considerations offer seems quite powerful (and multiple lenses is usually best, it seems, to avoid being trapped by our assumptions).

What thinkest thou?

Merf