'Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield' by Robert H. Latiff is a book about technology and war and it's written as a wake up call.

The author is an expert on the place of technology and war and comes from a career in the military. The various new types of warfare and innovation are discussed. Technology has the ability to help save lives, but if it is deployed wrong or misunderstood, it can have unintended consequences. Along with the idea of what future war looks like, the ethics of war are discussed. Also, the way the public perceives what the military does.

The author feels there are a few disconnects, so the author uses this book to make rational pleas rather than emotional. The book is a thought-provoking read and I'm really glad I chose to read it.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

The following 3-star review was posted to Every Day Should Be Tuesday, Amazon, and Goodreads on 10/25/2017:

It isn’t just science fiction writers who should keep an eye on the cutting edge of tech, especially in the military. Defense is a big part of what the government does, and tech is a big part of defense. It is your civic responsibility to pay a certain amount of attention. Future War does mention a lot of cool tech. And the focus on ethical issues is welcome. But Future War is ultimately unsatisfying because, while it raises questions, it doesn’t deal with them in a serious way.

Latiff has the right background on paper to write on these issues. He has degrees in physics, engineering, and history/strategy/international economics and had a long military career. And the book is well timed. The general public in America IS extremely disassociated from the U.S. military. We are on the cusp of major changes in tech at the same time that power is sliding from the “few and complex” toward the “many and simple.”

Latiff talks about a lot of tech, some possible now, some likely in the near future, and some more theoretical. Some highlights:

• Identification based on “the shape of the ear, the individual’s gait, fingerprint scanners that work at a distance, chemical markers in sweat, and the specifics of a heartbeat”
• Soldier body modifications—“exoskeletons to improve strength, drugs to improve cognition or alter memory, and surgery to implant microelectronic neurological aids,” “contact lenses that would allow a soldier to see in the infrared spectrum”
• Artificial intelligence replacing intelligence analysts
• Quantum computing that makes cryptography impossible
• “Black biology”—genetically engineered biological weapons, including externally triggered viruses and “individually customized genetic” weapons
• Underwater drones
• Lethal cyber capabilities (“interfere[ing] with the flight controls of an aircraft or to cause a bomb to detonate prematurely”)
• “Pain rays” for crowd control
• Hypersonic weapons
• Antisatellite systems

Many of these have the potential to fundamentally change how we fight wars, much as GPS and night-vision did. They also bring risk. Lethal cyber capabilities and antisatellite systems have the potential to sharply change the dynamic between the “few and complex” toward the “many and simple.” We have become highly reliant on technology and may become more so. Thankfully, the military is giving that risk at least some thought. After a ten year break, the U.S. Naval Academy reinstated the requirement that midshipmen learn to use a sextant for navigation.

All of this raises ethical issues and creates risks. One of Latiff’s major arguments is that the military and the public don’t give nearly enough attention to the ethical issues (though he does note that, for example, the military is not yet comfortable with completely autonomous lethal systems). I have to agree with this, and I like that the book takes ethical considerations into account.

He also notes that there are not just known risks but unknown risks. For example, we didn’t foresee the psychological toll that drone strikes would take on drone pilots. Latiff attempts to raise some questions. Automated weapons will reduce casualties. What does the removal of fear mean for constraints on unethical behavior? I doubt fear plays that great a role, but the point is we can’t KNOW how automated weapons systems will change behavior until we have them and start using them. We need to consider it now.

Oh, and these issues are a big deal financially too. The U.S. spends close to $200 budget on research, development, testing, and procurement out of a roughly $600 billion defense budget.

Latiff is taking the right approach, and he is very good at raising questions. What he isn’t very good at are answers. Especially toward the end, he tends to throw out sometimes radical ideas without developing the argument for them or providing any evidence. A few that were the reading equivalent of a poke in the eye for me:

Regarding the merits of attempts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, he says “if we have nuclear weapons, how can we tell others they can’t…?” I recognize the utility in considering ethical questions under the assumption that the parties start from the same position. But it has limited practical use. The United States et al. have nuclear weapons. That is hardly an argument for throwing the barn doors wide open and inviting everyone to take them. One, if disarmament is the end goal, adding nuclear countries gets us farther from that, not closer. Must we disarm before we can work to disarm others or prevent nuclear proliferation? As the statement by the United States, Great Britain, and France refusing to sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons noted, unilateral disarmament would be “incompatible with the policy of nuclear deterrence, which has been essential to keeping the peace in Europe and North Asia for over 70 years.”

Two, can Latiff argue that the world isn’t worse off with a nuclear North Korea? That it wouldn’t be worse off with a nuclear Iran? He can argue it is “fair” that they get the bomb, or that it is hypocritical for us to try to stop them, but even if those ethical considerations have any weight they simply have to be outweighed by the risk posed to liberal democracies like South Korea, Japan, and Israel. A simple test: no country that thinks another country should be wiped off the face of the map should have the bomb. Five of the nine nuclear countries are democracies. Does Latiff seriously believe that those five countries pose the same threat as the other four and Iran? That matters.

Latiff criticizes our response to the dissolution of the Soviet Union because we viewed it “as an opportunity to encourage capitalism, not democracy and human rights,” not grasping how the three are inextricably linked.

Latiff complains of movies “romanticizing the military and conflict” and “represent[ing] only one side of the conflict and glorify war.” I’m not sure if Latiff and I are watching movies by the same Hollywood. TV Tropes has an entire page devoted to the Obligatory War-Crime Scene. (He has a better point about their depiction of “unerringly accurate weapons.”)

Latiff presents the primary argument for an all-volunteer military as being that “for the military to reflect society is unimportant” as “long as the force is professional, efficient, and overwhelming.” But the better argument for an all-volunteer military is that conscription doesn’t actually reduce the support for war, that it lowers the quality of the military, and that it leads to higher casualties.

He describes the public response to the Iraq War as “muted” and “almost insignificant.” The former I might grant. But the latter? The Iraq War was the most significant political event of this century, including 9/11. It led to the Democrats retaking the Senate and the House in 2006. It led to Barack Obama, instead of Hillary Clinton, winning the Democratic nomination in 2008 and then the presidency. It led to a 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate (and thus allowed Dodd-Frank and Obamacare). It left George W. Bush without political capital, ruined any chance Jeb Bush had at winning the Republican nomination, and destabilized the GOP, opening the door for Donald Trump. It led Obama to not seek congressional approval to intervene in Libya and prevented any chance that the U.S. would intervene in Syria. If it doesn’t seem like a big deal, blame the media. Believe me, the public responded plenty.

Latiff claims that “[w]e are so enamored with military capabilities that we have experienced repeated budget crises in recent years because many in Congress could not bear the idea that social programs might be funded at a level equal to or greater than weapons and the military.” There are two separate, albeit interrelated arguments there. One is that military spending should go down. The other is that spending on social programs should go up. Even if we accept the first argument, the second argument by no means follows. In fact, some of the same arguments that Latiff makes in favor of reducing military spending counsel in favor of reducing spending on social programs. He says the public would quickly restrain the military if they were forced to cover the full cost. He is right, I think, but he might find the same about the social programs he would rather money be diverted to. He notes that “a large number of systems are mismanaged and far exceed their budgets and schedules.” Sure. The same is true for social programs. Latiff also repeatedly harps on the lack of attention that the public pays to military issues. Might they pay more attention, though, if the federal government didn’t spend so much time and money doing things it was never authorized to do by the Constitution?

Latiff notes that service contractors outnumber active duty soldiers. He asserts that is bad. Maybe it is. But he doesn’t tell us why. The use of contractors rather than employees is hardly unusual. And if some of those contractors are, as he notes, used for lawn mowing, the number alone doesn’t tell us very much. Latiff throws out nutty ideas like relying more heavily on National Guard and Reserve for foreign deployments. First, did he not notice the enormous strain we put on the National Guard and Reserve over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Second, if contractors are bad, why are reservists good? He also advocates for changes that “will allow far greater flexibility in allowing military personnel to move between military and civilian life and will allow outside experts, like technical experts from industry, to enter into service as more senior levels.” Sounds good. Will they be contractors?

This might still be a good book to pick up if you are particularly interested in these issues. But I have to believe a better book is out there. I wholeheartedly agree with Latiff that Americans need to think more about their military, its future, and the ethics issues that come with that. But this book is too poorly written and reasoned to be a spark for that fire.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of Future War through NetGalley.

Very interesting piece. It took me quite a while to read this one due to the tone and structure. However, Latiff does make some outstanding observations which give readers a great foundation to build upon their own areas of interest to take research into their own hands to find out more.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have to say right up front that I was disappointed in this. It seemed disorganized and rushed, and the text was so dense that it was hard to read, while at the same time so lacking in any breath that it felt like I was skimming the text even as I read every word!

I know this may sound strange coming from a fanatic like me who is always railing on authors and publishers to consider how many trees are being killed-off when setting up the formatting of their books, but I never expected to be advocating for a book to use more space than it did! This one went too far in compacting the text. The lines were so closely-spaced that it was hard to read, and then there was the usual 'academic-style' one-inch margin around the text! It felt so contradictory that it actually amused me. Smaller margins and slightly more widely-spaced text would have made it more appealing and a lot easier on the eye.

Even so, the way the book was put together was not appealing to me at all. Subtitled "Preparing for the New Global Battlefield," I felt it was so rushed and so shallow that it left me with very little useful information about how things might really be whether actually on a battlefield or in cyberspace. There are parts that were eye-opening and interesting, but the majority of this felt more like a largely-speculative work, rather than something which derived its prognostications from existing technology and predictable future directions.

On top of all this, the coverage of any one topic was so cursory that it really didn't get covered at all. One of the organizational problems was that there was very little in the way of hierarchical structure to the text, or by way of labeling subsections to make reading easier and to serve clarity. Consequently, it felt more like a stream-of-consciousness approach, and this didn't serve the subject matter well at all. The book was paradoxically only a step or two away from an outline list, yet nowhere did it actually have an outline list to make comprehension easier either in regard to what you had just read or were about to read in the upcoming chapter.

This book is very short and is a fast read, and if you want the vague 'ten-thousand foot' view or the whirlwind tour of future battlefield trends and technology, then this will give you a start, but it was really lacking far too much in depth and detail for me. It left me notably dissatisfied, and I cannot recommend it.

This book got a lot easier to process once I started reading it like a State of the Union address: its basic structure is a list of issues, each needing further consideration, expanded into paragraphs of text. Future War is packed with observations, trends and implications. It raises many questions and answers few. It makes so many points on so many topics, it’s best to think of it as a survey of a broad landscape of military concerns from the battlefield to domestic civil-military relations.

Despite the title, Future War is less about the future than about the potential hazards of continuing the way things are going now. It opens with the expected theme of new and near-future technologies that will change the nature of war. It’s a fair summary, but it sets the stage for the whirlwind tour to follow. From the future(ish) vision, the book shifts to a history of technology innovation and warfare, including the development of the arms industry that features so prominently today.

The second half of the book focuses on implications of current trends—for individual soldiers and for society—and the pace of issue identification really takes off. Among the many topics, the book gets into the morality of war, the effects of new technology on military culture and values, and the divide between a professional military subculture and the civilian population. In some sections, the book introduces serious issues and moves on to the next with each new paragraph. Giving each issue the consideration it deserves is clearly not the goal here.

I found myself wanting more structure to make the text easier to review. The text has so many points that they’re difficult to remember. An actual list at the end of each chapter or section, for example, would make it easier to recall the many issues.

I’m not sure of the intended audience for this book. Parts of it reads as wisdom for younger officers, who deal with the needs of individual soldiers. Other parts cover policy considerations that are the domain of elected leaders, while some of the big ideas should concern everyone. In the end, I see this book as the collected concerns of a highly experienced leader who has collected many of the things he wants people to think about in one place.

The first couple chapters will leave you sleepless and concerned as you contemplate high tech weaponry without boundaries, without limits, and without much in the way of defense. Then you begin to think about and realize that these are the same challenges that every age faces as they are faced with new technological breakthroughs, and somehow we always adjust. Just as you get through that and breathe a sigh of relief, you hit the sophomoric political/philosophical nonsense, and the fear of the future is replaced with simple disgust.

This review is a bit difficult for me, as I read an excellent book with the same title some years ago. Despite all attempts at not comparing, I have to admit some expectations seeped through, and the fact that they turned out to be on completely different paths didn’t help.
That other book was talking about weapons of the future, and there’s a little bit of that here: sonic waves, lasers, and other non-lethal newfangled inventions that DARPA’s working on. Twice the author lists historical military breakthroughs, but in both cases misses one of the most elementary and essential: stirrups.
But other than that small section on tech, this book is really one long surprising treatise on the philosophical, moral, and ethical implications of war in the future, rather than a description of actual warfare. There isn’t much about the tactics necessary to fight the new enemy that has made terrorism synonymous with warfare, for example. In fact, the ideas presented are not new, such as the chapter on leadership, and have always been a part of warfare since the Ancient Greeks. Perhaps he sees a need to remind people of it, and that’s fine up to a point, but the author belabors these opinions time and time again. If I’m smart enough to pick up this book, I’m smart enough not to be beat on the head over and over with the same kick. Plus it’s more likely a case of preaching to the choir of anyone interested in reading this book. For instance, he makes the point that people who are unaffected by war—in this case the American people—don’t care about the issues surrounding it. I wrote a paper on this very subject years ago, about Bosnia and Croatia and the bombing of Serbia, and I’m not exactly a military expert, so I have to say I learned very little here.
2.5 pushed up to 3/5

I am a voracious reader (a former English Professor), and my tastes run to military history, science fiction, alternate history and classics. That said, in my many years of reading, to include many books designed to elicit a reaction to horror, none has ever been more terrifying to me than this slim volume. The author is a former military man well placed to know and understand what he is talking about. The book's focus is on weapons systems of the future and their development. Because of his academic background and his military and intelligence background the author is a very credible source and clearly knows what he is talking about. Better still, his analysis, detailed and profoundly disturbing as it is, is informed by an obvious concern about the ethical challenges inherent in many of these new weapons. All that said, his cumbersome prose style is not for the light at heart. Nonetheless, if you are interested in the stuff of nightmares yet to come, you need to read this book. Much of the technology discussed here has only been encountered in science fiction for most readers, and even there, it is the rare narrative that dispassionately discusses the very serious ramifications of a technology which is fast outstripping our humanity. Typically, science fiction or military fiction will downplay the details of the various devices discussed while presenting them as magnificent Deus Ex Machina which might save us from our own follies in a dangerous world. Believe me when I say that is not what you take away from this book. In summary then, this is a book for both experts and laymen, but it is not for the lighthearted or those simply looking for a cursory examination of technology stripped of its consequences, and therein lies its greatest value.