Future Military Technology: A new battlefield in the ongoing culture war?

In The New Revolution in Military Affairs, the author Christian Brose predicts the arrival of several new disruptive technologies onto the battlefields of the future and that the United States military risks losing its current dominance not because of a lack of resources or technological know how, but because political of a lack of imagination and foresight on the part of the US’s military planners.  Brose specifically points out that he does not believe that ethical debates surrounding the use of new weapons systems will contribute to the US losing its technological edge. This is something that I disagree with, I can see the debate surrounding the ethical concerns of using new weapons technology becoming very prominent and politicized which would harm the US’s ability to honestly discuss whether or not new weapons systems should be used.

As we discussed last class, the United States has faced intense criticism at home and abroad for not renouncing the use of weapons such as land mines and napalm. We also discussed how strategic rivals like China and Russia have also not yet committed to not using these types of weapons. As we move into the future, there will no doubt be calls to ban new weapons technologies even before they are used. As we are currently seeing with the coronavirus outbreak, issues surrounding science and technology have the potential  to become a battleground for the ongoing culture war, with people taking sides not based on the actual merits of the new technology but in order to signal their allegiance to a particular side of the political divide. This would only serve to further fracture our already divided country and harm our ability to stay competitive with our military technology.