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> At the core of Patrikarakos’s book is the idea that narrative war has become far more important than physical war due to new technologies that shape public pe
by zeveb 9y ago
> At the core of Patrikarakos’s book is the idea that narrative war has become far more important than physical war due to new technologies that shape public perceptions of conflicts in real time, regardless of what is actually happening on the battlefield.
In The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, General Sir Rupert Smith repeatedly makes the point that victory in war is about achieving a condition in the mind of the adversary. An opponent who doesn't accept his defeat is still an active opponent. E.g. Japan was defeated at Midway in June 1942, but didn't surrender until August 1945: the U.S. had to convince Japan's government that it had lost.
In this sense, then, digital war is the same as pre-digital war: what matters is public perception. One can only win by convincing the victor and the vanquished alike that one has won.
- aklemm 9y agoThusly the Civil War rages.
- jostmey 9y agoNo amount of military hardware is effective if soldiers won't use it. Live video feed provided by cell phones can provide a way for ordinary people to see the truth, naked for what it is, instead of relying on their government. All that said, cell phones haven't stopped the civil war in Syria
- rbanffy 9y ago> can provide a way for ordinary people to see the truth For any truth that's pushed and reinforced enough.
- notahacker 9y agoThere's certainly been an evolution In the Boer War of the twentieth century news of conflict came via patriotic print media In WWII you got video, but in the form of propaganda footage in cinemas In Vietnam they watched broadcasts by media companies with some limited freedom to show how bad things were and even talk to real people. In Syria you can watch a 15 year old kid doing his own broadcast about what life is like in Syria. Trouble is, most bombs and chemical weapons don't come with claims of responsibility attached, footage is easily misrepresented as being something else entirely, and the reality is that an abundance of evidence of war crimes they've committed and the other faction has committed is a good reason for some armies to fight on militarily. And perhaps if accounts of the Vietnam War had included clearly authentic self-made videos from South Vietnamese civilians expressing their very sincere fear of the Viet Cong in decent English, it might have actually had more success in persuading the American public to continue to back their doomed military campaign than clumsy anti-Red propaganda and a lot of journalists' photos of carnage.