★★★★★ 5
The Real Arms Race
Format: Kindle
I am a life-long Democrat, supposed to bristle at the very idea of military spending. Brose's book convinced me the problem is not how much we spend, but what we're spending it on. "Kill chain" is military-speak for the three phases of combat -- figuring out what's going on, deciding what to do about it, and taking effective action. Brose spells out how technology changed all three phases while the Defense Department and its minders in Congress weren't paying attention. The result has been to significantly undermine our military preparedness and, more importantly, the ultimate goal of deterrence. For all the money we're spending, Brose shows how it's mostly on the wrong things, i.e., large, expensive platforms that are only incremental improvements over prior systems designed for different times. He shows how the military-industrial complex, abetted by a Congress invested in the status quo, is arming our military with technology inferior to what you'd find in a modern automobile. The development of the Internet may have been kick-started by the defense department back in the 1960s, but the information revolution that followed largely left the U.S. military behind. Meanwhile, potential adversaries are compensating for relatively lower defense budgets by exploiting emerging technologies that could change the character of war, raising multiple ethical, geo-political, and governance issues. The Kill Chain is compelling, scary, and must-reading for our political leaders and all intelligent voters.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2020
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