By comparing the rollout of cell phone networks with insurgent violence in Iraq, the authors show that cell phones-by offering low cost, anonymous ways of supplying information about insurgents at little risk to the informant-do appear to reduce and disrupt insurgent activity. On the other, it may instead increase attacks by enabling insurgents to better coordinate with one another. As the authors note, on the one hand, information technology may reduce insurgent attacks by making it easier for states to gather intelligence about the insurgents. Of particular note is chapter four, which offers a thorough overview of the debate regarding the effects of developments in information technology on insurgent violence. As leading contributors to that literature themselves, the authors do an admirable job of surveying its findings. From the pioneering research of Stathis Kalyvas in the early 2000s on, political scientists from Lisa Hultman to Laia Balcells have compiled an extraordinary body of empirical work on the “micro-foundations” of insurgent and civil war violence. But it is unique in terms of the breadth and depth of the empirical evidence it marshals. Small Wars, Big Data is by no means the first to offer that argument. In Berman, Felter, and Shapiro’s telling, just about everything that happens in an insurgency-from building schools and hospitals on the one hand, to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians on the other-can be read as an attempt to coax or intimidate civilians into divulging or withholding what they know. The challenge for the state is thus to convince local civilians to provide that information, while the challenge for insurgents is to persuade them not to. Since insurgents can readily blend in with their surrounding populations, regime forces cannot defeat an insurgency unless the local population identifies who and where the insurgents are. The core insight of Small Wars, Big Data is that insurgencies are ultimately competitions over information rather than territory or ideology.
Taken together, they begin to sketch out a vision for how AI and big data might alter insurgent dynamics. By contrast, Paul Scharre’s excellent new book, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, offers little in the way of counterinsurgency strategy, but is wholly concerned with how artificial intelligence will reshape armed conflict. Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict, by Eli Berman, Joseph Felter, and Jacob Shapiro, offers few musings about the future of insurgency, but lays out a compelling theory about the ways in which information shapes insurgent violence. The definitive work on emerging technology and insurgency has yet to be written, but two recent books offer suggestions for how the era of big data and AI will affect the United States’ modern conflicts.
0 kommentar(er)
