Wired Magazine : The Marshall Plan

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

 From Wired Magazine, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html



The Marshall Plan 

For 40 years, the man Pentagon insiders call Yoda has foreseen the
future of war - from battlefield bots rolling off radar-proof ships to
GIs popping performance pills. And that was before the war on terror.

By Douglas McGray 

Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles
with his security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally
speaks in a voice that sounds like Gene Hackman trying not to wake
anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall doesn't need to
shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment by
Richard Nixon and reappointed by every president since, the DOD's most
elusive official has become one of its most influential. Today,
Marshall - along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
- is drafting President Bush's plan to upgrade the military.
Supporters believe the force he envisions will be faster and more
lethal; critics say it relies on unproven technology. As US troops
gathered overseas, Marshall sat for a rare interview.

WIRED: Until recently, defense planners talked about a "revolution in
military affairs." Now the buzzword is "transformation." Why the
change?
MARSHALL: Transformation is more of an imperative: We've got to
transform the force. I personally don't like the term. It tends to
push people in the direction of changing the whole force. You need to
be thinking about changing some small part of the force more
radically, as a way of exploring what new technologies can really do
for you. 

What is the next radical change the US will reveal on the battlefield?
"One future intelligence problem: knowing what drugs the other guys
are on." One that's still under way is the emergence of a variety of
precision weapons, and also coupling them with sensors. Another is the
ability to coordinate the activities of separate elements of the
forces to a level that has never been possible before. That's
promising, but less far along than precision weapons. A third is
robotic devices: unmanned vehicles, of which the UAVs are the furthest
along, but also similar kinds of devices undersea, and smaller devices
that might change urban warfare by being able to crawl through
buildings. 

Are there revolutionary developments that don't involve combat?
There are ways of psychologically influencing the leadership of
another state. I don't mean information warfare, but some
demonstration of awesome effects, like being able to set off
impressive explosions in the sky. Like, let us show you what we could
do to you. Just visually impressing the person.

Did 9/11 change your mind about anything?
Not much. It was obvious that we were wide open to attack.

Has anything happened that surprised you?
The rapidity of the collapse of the Soviet Union surprised me. I
thought they were in trouble, but the rapidity and completeness of the
withdrawal were really striking.

Is there a precedent for one country staying on top through a series
of military revolutions? Or does one country always leapfrog another?
Through most of the 19th century, the British Navy exhibited that kind
of thing. But it was quite interesting the way they did it. They
tended to let other countries, mainly France, do the early experiments
and come out with new kinds of ships. If something looked like a good
idea, they could come in and quickly overtake the innovator. They
seemed to do that as a way of capitalizing on their advantage and
saving resources. 

Isn't the United States in a similar position now?
That's probably the case. But some of the countries that would be
candidates to make innovations aren't doing it. The Japanese and West
Europeans aren't really making big changes. The Swedes are an
interesting case. For 200 years their basic problem was the
possibility of a large-scale land invasion by the Russians. They've
decided that that has gone away. If anything could happen, it would
happen across the Baltic. So they're rethinking, given modern
technology, how to create a defense largely on sea frontiers. It's
possible that they will make some innovations that we'll pick up and
capitalize on. 

For instance?
They've designed three new naval vessels. One is an air-independent
submarine [running on fuel cells rather than nuclear power, which
allows it to travel almost silently and remain submerged for extended
periods]. They have a surface ship that's a bit more conventional. And
then a radically new naval vessel called the Visby, which has
practically no metal in it other than the engine. It's constructed to
be very stealthy. 

You're known for following technology outside the traditional realm of
national security. Pharmaceuticals, for instance.
People who are connected with neural pharmacology tell me that new
classes of drugs will be available relatively shortly, certainly
within the decade. These drugs are just like natural chemicals inside
people, only with behavior-modifying and performance-enhancing
characteristics. One of the people I talk to jokes that a future
intelligence problem is going to be knowing what drugs the other guys
are on. 

In an era of terrorism and peacekeeping, are Cold War ideas based on
striking a big enemy from afar and defending against missile attack
still relevant?
Yes, if we want to stay in the business of long-range power
projection. And if we play the role of intervening in messy disputes,
some of this weaponry is still useful, as it was in Afghanistan.
However, we need ground forces to go in and keep the peace.

Does new technology ultimately make us more or less vulnerable?
A friend of mine, Yale economist Martin Shubik, says an important way
to think about the world is to draw a curve of the number of people 10
determined men can kill before they are put down themselves, and how
that has varied over time. His claim is that it wasn't very many for a
long time, and now it's going up. In that sense, it's not just the US.
All the world is getting less safe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Douglas McGray interviewed J. Craig Venter in Wired 10.12.


Copyright (C) 1993-99 The Conde Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.


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