The tools of the Information Age have been used to construct wonders. The computers, software, routers, and fiber-optic lines created during the last 30 years have made possible the Internet, e-mail, the World Wide Web, on-line shopping, "chatrooms", and other means by which people have been able to transcend their surroundings and engage the wider world.

But the same tools that have been used to build can be used to destroy. In The Next World War, journalist James Adams gives a harrowing account of how some of that destruction has already taken place, and how more -- much, much more -- might happen in the future.

According to Adams, the Information Age has changed not just the mode of interpersonal communication, but the mode of warfare as well. Using the crushing defeat of the Iraqi army in 1991 as his case, Adams argues that future battles will be decided less and less by clashes between mobilized masses of soldiers and equipment and more and more by generals who have just the right information and can use it to put just the right soldiers and just the right equipment in just the right place at just the right time. The mass warfare enabled by the telegraph and the railroad is being replaced by the precision warfare enabled by the satellite uplink and the Internet. And just as their lack of understanding of the then-new mass warfare doomed the then-dominant French in their 1870 war with Prussia, a similar lack of understanding of the new precision warfare could doom the now-dominant United States in...five years? Ten years?

But not only conventional warfare will be changed -- warfare against civilians will be different in the future as well. To the land-based artillery attacks of the 19th century and the air-based bombing raids of the 20th century, Adams adds the cyberspace-based information warfare of the 21st century: Installing viruses into air traffic control software, hacking into pharmaceutical production monitors in order to adulterate medicines, taking down the electrical grid with logic bombs, blowing up gas lines by sabotaging their pressure monitors, and other attacks designed to cause panic by sowing distrust of the computers on which people depend. Warfare of the future will seek to demoralize the civilian population by stealthily and unpredictably striking at the foundations of modern life.

The Next World War is a call for the West to prepare to meet this new threat to its existence. The West's technological superiority gives it both a greater ability to fight information warfare and a greater vulnerability to information warfare attacks. This vulnerability is three-fold. Economically, Western countries depend heavily on publically accessible computerized information transfer. Militarily, Western armies have based their battle strategies on the ability of military units to exchange information and order supplies rapidly and accurately. Psychologically, Western citizens (through the free press and the Internet) have much greater access than people of other nations to enemy propaganda and persuasion. Adams worries that the openness that is the basis for Western wealth could also become the cause of its ruin.

The President approached Herbert Shugart, the father of Randall Shugart [an American soldier killed in Somalia], and held his hand out. To his astonishment, the handshake was declined. "The blame for my son's death rests with the White House and you. You are not fit to command." Clinton reeled under the onslaught, which continued for several moments. As Commander in Chief, President Clinton could have simply accepted responsibility for the loss and sympathized with a grieving father. Instead, he took fifteen minutes out of his schedule to explain to Herbert Shugart why the death of his son was not his fault. It was a craven performance that horrified the Pentagon officials who were present. [73-74]

 
Revealing anecdotes such as the above are both the strength of Adams' book and its weakness. Adams obviously has a number of excellent sources high up in the military and the intelligence community, but he serves as their mouthpiece rather than as a critical examiner of what they tell him. In The Next World War, Adams almost never seriously explores or considers any point of view about information warfare and its consequences aside from the point of view of his sources.

Keeping that caveat in mind, The Next World War is well worth reading for its fascinating and frightening look at the warfare of the 21st century, and for its wake-up call to American complacency: "As David proved against Goliath, strength can be beaten. America today looks uncomfortably like Goliath, arrogant in its power, armed to the teeth, ignorant of its weakness."

Review posted: 29 August 1999