Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the changing tactics, technologies and terrains of twenty-first century war.
It argues that the world in 2049 is unlikely to look like the climate change/artificial intelligence (AI) dystopia depicted in Blade Runner 2049, but nor will it be a world where conflict and war has been transformed by a civilising process' that eradicates violence and conflict from the human condition. 2049 is also the year that the US Department of Defense has suggested China will become a world-shaping military power. All states will be engaged in arms races' across a variety of new tools and technologiesfrom drones, robotics, AI and quantum computingthat will transform politics, economy, society and war.
Drawing on thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, the book suggests that future war will be shaped by three broad tendencies that include a broad range of tactics, technologies and trends; the impure, the granular and the machinic. Through discussions of
Trade Review
'Theorising Future Conflict takes us on a thrilling journey into the cyberpunk politics of war and security that the near future may well have in store. Weaving a path amid sci-fi dystopias, liberal theory, and war studies, Mark Lacy offers us a sobering assessment of how global security (and society) may be transformed this side of 2049. Exactly the kind of free and clear thinking we need in a moment too often in hock to glib optimism or dark dystopias.'
Ruben Andersson, University of Oxford, UK
'Lacy takes us to a future of ‘shimmers’, ‘hybrids’ and ‘cyborgs’ that speaks to our present. How did we reach it? What alternative futures were discarded on the way? Instead of ready-made answers, this book proposes materials, tools and spaces to speculate, face and form our futures.'
Anna Leander, Geneva Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland
'Drawing inspiration from science fiction, Mark Lacy's Theorising Future Conflict is an innovative and theoretically sophisticated mediation on the possible trajectories of armed conflict.'
Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge, UK
Table of Contents1. Introduction: A Mug’s Game Part I: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century 2. The Liberal Way of Future Warfare 3. The Lethal State of Modernity Part II: The Tactics, Terrains and Technologies of Future Warfare 4. The Impure 1: On the Sub-Threshold of Modernity and War 5. The Impure 2: Glitches in the Digital War Machine—The (Hu)Man, the State and (Cyber)War 6. The Granular 1: The Changing Scale in Conflict 7. The Granular 2: The Granularity of Future War 8. The Machinic 1: The Battle Angels of Our Better Nature 9. The Machinic 2: The Great Accelerator? AI and the Future of Warfare 10. Cyberpunk International Politics? Enter the Shimmer
