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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 It gets harder to go to war WHEN Britain embarked on the industrial revolution, it was on the back of a superior war machine. Better longbows, swords, armour, guns and ships had established an empire that controlled a vast percentage of the globe, and this one nation could and did manufacture everything. The process of industrialisation took a mere 70 years. Riding on the back of the British experience, the US copied the design of machines and emulated organisations to complete this same task in just 40 years. Japan accomplished the same in 25 years and China might just do it in 10 years. Today the path to an information economy is being led by the US and will probably be completed in 15 years or less. So we might expect other countries to get there later, but in an even shorter period by the same mechanism of learning from, and improving on, the leader. In every case there has been a rapid migration from the mining and processing of raw materials to create iron and steel, to the creation of smokestack industries, and finally to higher levels of technology. This move from raw atoms to a more bit-centric economy also sees the old foundation industries die. The smelting of ores, creation of steel plate, and much more by the front-runners has gradually been outsourced to younger nations. The day of the do-it-all, self-sufficient nation is now long gone. None can afford the technology to simultaneously produce all their own food, smelt and refine all their own materials, manufacture all their own white and brown goods, and produce and supply all their own IT. The depth of technical sophistication of industrial and IT processes has now made it impossible to create everything within a nation. The force of the global economy and the availability of skills have created a world of specialist companies and nations. This trend looks set to continue and become more refined as networks and IT reduce distance. But there is a further and much greater force at work - the economy of scale associated with key components. The global market can probably support three jet engine manufacturers, with three for internal combustion engines, memory chips and displays. The key consequence of these trends is that no single country can now go it alone. Britain could no longer wage the Second World War because it lacks the smokestack industries, and the skills they supported, to create weapons systems and platforms on a large scale. Even the US depends on others for raw materials and components. So any war waged by any nation is bound to be short lived. There is now a new opportunity to reduce even further the prospect of a major conflagration. The electronic back door can be designed into every chip, network and software package. If I were an arms manufacturer, I would engineer remote disabling access points for fear that customers might migrate from friend to foe. Of course, the suppliers of my modules and components across the world might also feel this way towards me. Might this be the ultimate stand-off? Even the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the fanatical might not be safe for ever. Peace through mutual disability looks feasible. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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