Technology, War and the Fourth Turning

Consumer-grade radio control technology has gotten very cheap. It has long been true that there are a wide array of ways that terrorists can strike at America directly because they don't have to care if they fail once or twice. I am amazed that no one has lofted a dirty bomb of some kind or another with a balloon from a boat just outside the 12-mile limit on the west coast. The truth of asymmetrical warfare is that it's most likely going to be used to the disadvantage of the U.S.

In a similar vein, one could cite the schools in China devoted to teaching students to 'crack' electronic networks. Regardless of their 'official' support, the fact that they exist at all says the Internet is going to get very interesting during the next global crisis… as in “may you live in interesting times.”

Our government is making some daffy moves as well as expensive ones. I read recently that the hardened LORAN-C network is going to be dismantled soon as “wasteful”, leaving us solely dependent on the extremely vulnerable GPS satellites. As Ben Bova pointed out in his recent new fiction “Able One,” one dirty bomb — or even just a shrapnel release — at 22,300 could wipe out the whole network.