[BoorishBears]

I've always secretly hoped warfare would move to the digital realm soley.

We have some shades of that happening already, but I imagine a future where instead of sending young people to die,warring nations wreck each others economies remotely... which again isn't too far from current day.

While there'd still be casualties it wouldn't be nearly as barbaric as current wars, more developed nations would finally have as much skin in the game as disadvantaged ones, etc.

The way I see it, the best way to discourage war is to make it unprofitable. If war just becomes directly hurting each other's ability to make money I could see war, or erm excuse me armed conflicts, getting a lot more unattractive.

[lebuffon]

Covered in the original Star Trek series over 50 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

People marked as casualties had to report to the disintegration chamber.

[dillondoyle]

I'm not sure it wouldn't be as barbaric at least if that word means human suffering and death. But I agree it's the future of war.

[BoorishBears]

Human suffering and death are not binary things.

War will always be a bad thing, but putting people on the ground in a foreign land with the mission to kill others has always amplified the horrors of war many many times over.

Taking out power in half the US for a day would kill thousands, but it's the equivalent of an all out attack on the US.

Compare that to if another country were to physically commit to an all out attack and it's easy to see why this would make future wars look like minor skirmishes compared to what's happened in the past

[dillondoyle]

I agree the worst of humanity comes out in war. We'll see what happens with China vs. US. I doubt we'd see nuclear at least, but maybe the new tactical weapons make that more likely.

I think the difference in our viewpoints might be that I don't think it would just be power our for a day.

I think it would be far far worse.

Explosions, power out for months. Exploding a pipeline much harder to repair.

cutting off chip supply with the precipitating attack on Taiwan so we can only access our onshore capacity, if there isn't a cleanroom breach taking weeks or months to recover. Or say an attack on ASML.

sewer services going out or changing the mix to make water not or less safe. Damns.

It's just such a huge amount of our day to day lives; even very simple out of date XP hacks take a while to patch, let alone something like the supply chain chip attack Bloomberg reported and never retracted - which is still weird in my mind and something I could totally see as a current reality on both sides with a long history of similar 3 letter behavior from US.

[BoorishBears]

I don't see how any of that wouldn't be worse than conventional warfare.

At that point where we're being attacked with pipelines exploded we'd be getting bombed.

It's a lot easier to fix a contaminated water treatment facility than a pile of rubble. Same for every other form of technology.

It's almost tautological, the system controls malfunctioning at worst can only destroy the system, conventional warfare defaults to destroying the system.

[joejerryronnie]

I think you’re going to see this more and more (at least with wealthy nations). And I think the motivation for war has always been primarily about profit.

[BoorishBears]

It's been motivated by profit, but this harms the motivation

Right now it is profitable for us to go to war. Contracts are signed, jobs are created, it is good for powerful wealthy people for the country to be at war. And if you're powerful enough the risk of retaliation is so low that it's all gain and no cost (outside of human cost which is never enough apparently)

With this type of war the equation would be switched. Going to war directly harms wealthy benefactors, who as a result of their wealth hold political influence.

We're already seeing that aren't we? Espionage at companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It's not harming any "normal person" but it's directly hurting the pocketbooks of powerful people. It creates incentive to avoid conflict in a way that (unfortunately) young men and women dying doesn't seem to have done in the past

[joejerryronnie]

I agree and you make some good points.