"These Kids Are Going To Make Mean Techno-Warriors"

[Jcrowley]

This is from the US Army War College publication "Parameters" and gives insight into how they think about the world. Ralph Peters is a psychopath but serves as the mouthpiece for a large group of movers and shakers inside The Pentagon. Not to be taken lightly.

Constant Conflict

RALPH PETERS

We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

<snip>

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

<snip>

The complex human-machine interface developing in the US military will be impossible to duplicate abroad because no other state will be able to come from behind to equal the informational dexterity of our officers and soldiers. For all the complaints--in many respects justified--about our public school systems, the holistic and synergistic nature of education in our society and culture is imparting to tomorrow's soldiers and Marines a second-nature grasp of technology and the ability to sort and assimilate vast amounts of competitive data that no other population will achieve. The informational dexterity of our average middle-class kid is terrifying to anyone born before 1970. Our computer kids function at a level foreign elites barely manage, and this has as much to do with television commercials, CD-ROMs, and grotesque video games as it does with the classroom. We are outgrowing our 19th-century model education system as surely as we have outgrown the manned bomber. In the meantime, our children are undergoing a process of Darwinian selection in coping with the information deluge that is drowning many of their parents. These kids are going to make mean techno-warriors. We just have to make sure they can do push-ups, too.

<snip>

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/97summer/peters.htm

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. What's creepy is that he's so dispassionate about killing and mayhem

He writes about it as if he were discussing the merits of different restaurants. A lot of his observations about U.S. and foreign culture ring true but I think he (and the rest if they think as he does) is seriously overestimating American ingenuity and mastery of information. Those "middle class computer kids" he refers to are a small percentage of our young people. You wouldn't believe how many kids can't even turn a computer on, despite the perception that all kids here are techno-savvy. That's why, I fear, he is right about the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots and it all hinges on technology.