War has dramatically changed. I don't envision mass drone armies bombing cities. I imagine extremely precise and targeted strikes enabled by technology. Why fi

War has dramatically changed. I don't envision mass drone armies bombing cities. I imagine extremely precise and targeted strikes enabled by technology. Why fight a whole war when you can just kill the generals? If we want to think about war from an economic perspective, it doesn't make sense to kill civilians. Civilians are valuable. Murdering the labor force you seek to extract rent from is usually a bad decision. Civilians probably don't care as much about the political situation as their personal situation. It also just complicates things. It's possible that technology pushes war in this direction but it could also go in the direction you hint at. A country may be able to conduct an asymmetric war where their soldiers/civilians face 0 risk and the other side faces all of the risk. A country may also use this technology to control its own civilians. I think it's an active choice and if we don't push in the better realistic direction the other path will be taken.