Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century |  | Author: P. W. Singer
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
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Rating:  51 reviews
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Media: Hardcover
Pages: 512
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Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6 x 1.7
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.020112
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Product Description
A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself
P. W. Singers previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revolution in military affairs since the atom bombthe advent of robotic warfare.
We are just beginning to see a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make the stuff of I,Robot and the Terminator all too real. More than seven- thousand robotic systems are now in Iraq. Pilots in Nevada are remotely killing terrorists in Afghanistan. Scientists are debating just how smartand how lethalto make their current robotic prototypes. And many of the most renowned science fiction authors are secretly consulting for the Pentagon on the next generation.
Blending historic evidence with interviews from the field, Singer vividly shows that as these technologies multiply, they will have profound effects on the front lines as well as on the politics back home. Moving humans off the battlefield makes wars easier to start, but more complex to fight. Replacing men with machines may save some lives, but will lower the morale and psychological barriers to killing. The warrior ethos, which has long defined soldiers identity, will erode, as will the laws of war that have governed military conflict for generations.
Paradoxically, these new technologies will also bring war to our doorstep. As other nations and even terrorist organizations start to build or buy their own robotic weapons, the robot revolution could undermine Americas military preeminence. While his analysis is unnerving, theres an irresistible gee-whiz quality to the innovations Singer uncovers. Wired for War travels from Iraq to see these robots in combat to the latter-day skunk works in Americas suburbia, where tomorrows technologies of war are quietly being designed. In Singers hands, the future of war is as fascinating as it is frightening.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
 A truly eye-opening book, superbly researched and written February 2, 2009
James Beswick (Los Angeles, CA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
I first heard the author talking on NPR about this topic, and both that interview and the first chapter of this book show his excitement and deep interest and understanding of this subject. For such a weighty hardback, it's remarkably hard to put down, and each section evolves intelligently from the last. I particularly enjoyed the references to modern culture, given that robotics has largely been a subject of science fiction in the last few decades rather than yielding anything practical in reality.
Well, at least so I thought - it turns out that over 12,000 robots are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak. The companies producing these machines were spurred by the very real necessities of dealing with guerrilla warfare, and avoiding the human toll associated with such difficult environments. Through a combination of human-controlled and artificially-intelligent hardware, these robots back up our soldiers and provide a super-human level of robustness and accuracy.
The author raises the complex moral questions associated with having machines killing people on the frontline, and the issues that arise when mistakes occur. There's also a fascinating discussion of stress disorders that remote pilots are suffering from - these men and women sit in offices in the US, controlling machines on the battleground far away, and return home for dinner every day after "a day's fighting".
It's also interesting to look at the design of some of the machines and their control interfaces, many of which look like Wall-E with a machine gun. Weapons companies have copied controllers from the Playstation and Xbox, taking advantage of a generation that is comfortable using these devices without extensive retraining. The distance between shooting people on Halo and making real life-or-death decisions in operating a military robot is almost absurdly non-existent.
I don't want to steal the book's thunder at all since this is one of the most gripping reads I've found in a while, and would highly recommend to everyone. While not a robotics book or a war book, it falls somewhere in the middle, and the topic is enthusiastically presented. The most chilling part is clearly that the science fiction of movies such as The Terminator is really not too far away, and we're on a cusp of a robotics revolution that will be as profound as the domination of the PC.
Making war impersonal February 2, 2009
Julie Neal (Sanibel Island, Fla.)
20 out of 24 found this review helpful
This frightening and funny book helped me understand the future of war in all its technological splendor. What was once the stuff of science fiction, such as machines thinking for themselves, is now our military's reality.
Unfortunately, as Isaac Asimov quotes in Wired for War: "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
The military began using robots primarily to fill the "Three D" roles people were poor at: jobs that were Dull, Dirty or Dangerous. Unmanned systems "don't need to sleep, don't need to eat, and find monitoring empty desert sands as exciting as partying at the Playboy mansion." The use of unmanned systems has exploded, especially since the attacks of September 11. As one U.S. Navy researcher puts it: "The robot is our answer to the suicide bomber."
I heard an NPR interview with the author, and what struck me most was his description of how impersonal war has become. Almost like playing video games, people here in the states can launch missiles and cause all kinds of mayhem on battlefields overseas, untouched by all the messiness of being on site. Singer reveals the disdain combat troops sometimes have for these faraway operators, even though they are on the same side.
All sorts of pop culture references are woven through the book, including The Iron Giant, The Matrix, Night of the Living Dead, Predator, Star Wars, The Terminator, Total Recall, Wall-E and the Nintendo Wii. There is also a glossy-page insert of 32 black and white photographs.
The book poses provocative ethical questions about the new trend of one-step-removed killing. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.
Here's the chapter list:
Author's Note: Why a Book on Robots and War?
Part One: The Change We Are Creating
1. Introduction: Scenes from a Robot War
2. Smart Bombs, Norma Jeane, and Defecating Ducks: A Short History of Robotics
3. Robotics for Dummies
4. To Infinity and Beyond: The Power of Exponential Trends
5. Coming Soon to a Battlefield Near You: The Next Wave of Warbots
6. Always in the Loop? The Arming and Autonomy of Robots
7. Robotic Gods: Our Machine Creators
8. What Inspires Them: Science Fiction's Impact on Science Reality
9. The Refuseniks: The Roboticists Who Just Say No
Part Two: What Change is Creating For Us
10. The Big Cebrowski and the Real RMA: Thinking About Revolutionary Techniques
11. "Advanced" Warfare: How We Might Fight With Robots
12. Robots That Don't Like Apple Pi: How the U.S. Could Lose the Unmanned Revolution
13. Open-Source Warfare: College Kids, Terrorists, and Other New Users of Robots at War
14. Losers and Luddites: The Changing Battlefields Robots Will Fight On and the New Electronic Sparks of War
15. The Psychology of Warbots
16. YouTube War: The Public and Its Unmanned Wars
17. Changing the Experience of War and the Warrior
18. Command and Control... Alt-Delete: New Technologies and Their Effect on Leadership
19. Who Let You in the War? Technology and the New Demographics of Conflict
20. Digitizing the Laws of War and Other Issues of (Un)Human Rights
21. A Robot Revolt? Talking About Robot Ethics
22. Conclusion: The Duality of Robots and Humans
Fascinating Read March 25, 2009
Ralph A. Weisheit (Normal, IL USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is an eye-opening book but the title understates the breadth of its coverage. Yes, it is about the use of robots and automated systems in war but it goes far beyond that, discussing the many ways that computers and robots have entered our daily lives and the ways they are likely to do so in the future. The book is not just about robots and technology but also about human beings and how they related to their creations. Consequently, when the author makes the link between advances in robot design and science fiction it makes perfect sense, although it is an angle I hadn't previously considered. This book's strength is that it walks that fine line -- on the one hand it is carefully researched and documented but on the other is written in a highly readable style so that the reader is both informed and entertained. You know much more when you are finished and had fun in the process. Who could ask for more? I was drawn to this book having heard an interview with the author and having read his two previous books, "Corporate Warriors" and "Children at War." All three have a characteristic I particularly like in a nonfiction book -- the author is not dogmatic, raises concerns but doesn't cry that the sky is falling, doesn't shout at the reader, and doesn't offer easy solutions to complex problems. Instead, the author undertakes a reasoned and fair analysis of the issue, illustrating the complexities of what on the surface might seem a simple issue. As a result the author makes a more powerful statement than could ever be made by a sensationalist approach.Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Updated Edition (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs); Children at War
A wide-ranging exploration of a subject of the utmost importance February 13, 2009
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been engaged in a reading project touching upon many aspects of robots and artificial people. After hearing Mr. Singer on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, I immediately ordered a copy of this book. Singer is more concerned to bring to light the many, many aspects of using robots and unmanned vehicles in war than in making final conclusions and policy recommendations, but given the relative unfamiliarity most people have with the way they are actually being employed NOW in conflict, this is just as well.
It has to be stressed that this is not a book about how robots and unmanned weapons might possibly be used in war, though there is consideration of how it might develop further in the future. The book, rather, is concerned with how they are being used now, this very second, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and, through the use of the Global Hawk spy drones, all over the planet. Some of the individuals Singer interviewed speculate about how things might develop in the future, but for the most the book focuses on weapons systems actually in place and being used. The age of robotized war does not lie somewhere in the future, but has already started. I was vaguely aware that Predator drones were being used in combat, but I had no idea of precisely how many nor how many had been armed. There are thousands upon thousands of Predators, Global Hawks, Packbots, Ravens, CRAMs, Fire Scout helicopters, Swords, and Talons already in use in the Middle East, and the only reason there aren't more is because the companies -- like iRobot, which is perhaps better known for making the Roomba vacuum cleaner -- can't make them any faster. And this doesn't even include unmanned planes like the Boeing X-45, which performed better than the joint strike fighter currently under development as the military aircraft of the future, at a fraction of the past.
Singer raises a host of issues in connection with these systems. Some of the book has a on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand as Singer continually shifts from the military and moral pros and cons of these systems and then impact they are having in transforming war. Do they lead to more moral warfare? Do they create more danger than they alleviate? What are the host of legal questions that surround robots in combat? If a CRAM -- an automated machine gun programmed to shoot down incoming missiles -- fails and starts shooting innocent people instead, is it a war crime? And if so, who is to be held to blame?
The number of issues that Singer takes up is absolutely mind boggling. And frankly I wasn't quite sure what my own position on robots in war is after having read it. There are so many pros and cons that it is almost impossible to make a snap judgment. I think the book is absolutely essential reading for anyone wanting to stay up on what is happening in the world. There is absolutely no question that the use of robots and unmanned systems in combat is transforming war as we know it. One of Singer's most important services in writing the book is to highlight how the issues surrounding robots in warfare are simply not being seriously addressed. Our morals sometimes lag behind our technology. It is essential that our species begin to think seriously about the issues surrounding this advanced technology in military situations. O brave new world, that has such machines in it!
I do want to quibble a bit. Singer makes a bit of a to do about the book being pop culturally savvy. Yet, the book contains several errors along those lines. Seeing a lot of out and out errors makes me nervous in reading a book. If the author has made boo-boos with things I know about, could he have made similar errors on things that I don't know about but on which I am accepting him as an authority? My guess is that the errors were on some inessential things. But let me note just a few.
In a footnote on virtually the very first line in the book, Singer states that the word "frak" was first used in the early eighties by computer geeks and then later used in the Ron Moore and David Eick reimagining of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Well, BSG is one of my all time favorite show, and like many fans of the new version I find the original 1978 show to be not only unwatchable, but one of the worst shows in the history of TV. But you have to give it, and not early eighties computer geeks, credit for "frak." The word was initially adlibbed by Dirk Benedict (the male version of Starbuck). Most likely the computer geeks borrowed the word from the original BSG. Another error. Singer astonishingly credits the phrase, "Hell is other people," to Nietzsche. The origin of the famous phrase is, of course, from the end of Sartre's famous play, NO EXIT. Singer makes several references to Karel Èapek's R.U.R., in which the word "robot" was used for the first time, and speaks as if Èapek were the source for the word. It was, in fact, a coinage by his brother Josef, who freely lent it to Karel. On the back cover of the book Howard Gordon is listed as an Executive Producer of 24, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and THE X-FILES. He is indeed currently executive producer of 24, but I believe he was only a consulting producer on both BUFFY and THE X-FILES, an important distinction because he was fairly far down the pecking order on both of those series. There were a few other infelicities, but these give a hint of the pop cultural inaccuracy that flitters through the book. My hope is that there are not more substantial errors as well.
It's Not About The Future February 25, 2009
Marc Korman (Maryland)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Wired For War is a fascinating exploration of the current, near term, and long term technological advances in war. Since many technological advances quickly shift from defense applications to civilian ones, it is really a sneak peak at future mainstream technologies. The book gives some technical information, but is really about the stories and societal questions surrounding this technology.
What makes Wired for War so fascinating is not its discussion about the future, but its discussion of the world today. When Singer talks about robots, he is not talking about humanoid looking bionic beings that can overpower and overthink us (though those may be in the pipeline), but about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles currently flying over Afghanistan, remote controlled robots defusing IEDs, and computer programs already being used.
These existing technologies, and their near term successors, raise lots of interesting questions that Singer discusses. For example, will we always keep a human in the loop? Do we start work on a mothership model or a network model (or a network of motherships)? How do we treat troops who never actually deploy, but fight wars by remote control? Do they get the same services as vets? Can they receive military decorations? What does increased technology do to our threshold for war? How do our enemies view this use of technology? Will the rise of asymmetric warfare demonstrate a misplaced faith in advanced technology? Do we need a military robotics doctrine? Do we start blacklisting certain robotics research the way we do certain nuclear weapons research? In the longer term, do we need to create legal rights for robotics?
The impact of these technological advances will probably be felt in two ways. The first way is their expected effect. For example, a UAV is built for recon or weaponry, and it can carry out those tasks. The second way is the societal effect. For example, as discussed above what does the use of UAVs mean for those fighting the wars?
The latter societal effects may not be as impactful as proponents of the "singularity" believe. From the first day back in elementary school I picked up a calculator, I have used a machine smarter than me. Does it matter that some day soon all the machines on earth will be smarter than all the people, or will that be as little noticed as the impact of the calculator?
Singer's comparison of the current use of robotics with the network-centric approach pioneered by Admiral Cebrowski and championed in the early years of the Bush Administration was also fascinating. These two "Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMAs)" are probably closer related than Singer admits. But what is fascinating is his discussion of over-command arising out of them. Those in the field may now have access to big picture, whole battlespace intelligence. But that also means those in the rear have access to ground level information. The urge, and ability, for those in the rear to get too closely involved in tactics on the ground will far outweigh those on the ground.
Singer's quick tour of current robotics technology and the questions it is raising, as well as the longer term discussion, is a fascinating read. In many cases, what I thought were distant questions when I picked up the book I now realize are historical discussions I already missed or are fast approaching. This is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in national security or technology.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 51
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