WIRED World in 2023: The Rise and Fall of the Modern Warfare Fleet in the 21st Century, and What We Can Do About It
It won’t be possible to sneak an army, navy, or air force into someone else’s country in 2023. Armed forces around the world will try to counter this by assembling, moving from home bases, and maneuvering on the front lines in more dispersed ways, hiding as much as possible in plain sight. The fleet of vans moving small numbers of heavy weaponry on well-worn routes from the west to the east in the Ukranian peninsula shows what can be done.
This story is from the WIRED World in 2023, our annual trends briefing. Read more stories from the series here—or download or order a copy of the magazine.
The success of shoulder-launched and heavy anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles against Russian columns of armored vehicles and aircraft was a major factor in the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva. One precision missile, even if it costs tens of thousands of dollars, can destroy a platform that costs many millions and put the lives of its crew in mortal jeopardy. This will transform how armies, navies, and air forces organize, equip, and operate. The cost and manufacturing complexity of these weapons is a restraining factor in today’s market, but will only get worse as the world continues to suffer from the Great Power Conflict of the 21st century.
Despite this transformation, the nature of war will never change: It will be about killing people and breaking their stuff faster than they can do it to you. It will still be an aspect of the human condition that is far from being completely eliminated for its viciousness and irrationality. The outcome will remain an unscripted mix of reason, emotion, and chance. Technology only changes how we fight, not why.
Google to Warfare: Building a Better War-Fronting System, or: How Google Could Open an Internet of Things with a deadly twist
Schmidt became CEO of Google in 2001, when the search engine had a few hundred employees and was barely making money. He stepped away from Alphabet in 2017 after building a sprawling, highly profitable company with a stacked portfolio of projects, including cutting-edge artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, and quantum computers.
He is attempting to get the US military out of his way. “Imagine you and I decide to solve the Ukrainian problem, and the DOD gives us $100 million, and we have a six-month contest,” he says. “And after six months somebody actually comes up with some new device or new tool or new method that lets the Ukrainians win.” Is the problem solved? Not so fast. “Everything I just said is illegal,” Schmidt says, because of procurement rules that forbid the Pentagon from handing out money without going through careful but overly lengthy review processes.
“Let’s imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says, outlining what would amount to an enormous overhaul of the most powerful military operation on earth. We would start a tech company. He goes on to sketch out a vision of the internet of things with a deadly twist. There would be many inexpensive devices that were highly mobile and that would be attritable, with drones that would have sensors or weapons to interact with each other.