Quantum Theory of War?

Thanks to Mark for sending on the link to Stanton Coerr’s new article in the Marine Corps Gazette, Fifth-Generation War: Warfare versus the nonstate. The piece is a stab at framing the future development of the global jihad and other possible conflicts within a tweaked version of 5GW that Coerr calls QTW – the Quantum Theory of War.

QTW draws on various ‘quantum’ theories of matter and process to analogise a model for 5GW. At the centre of Coerr’s concentric rings model is the ‘radical core belief’, around which orbit layers of conviction that dissipate as their distance from the atomic core increases. This is an interesting model, predicated on the idea that “entities shed energy as they move away from center, or gain it as they move closer, yielding probabilistic “valences” rather than predictable orbits.”

So far, so good. This would appear to match characteristics of distributed adversarial networks, howsoever we understand that term, but the idea’s not really developed in the article. By the end I was no wiser as to how this “new model” was any different from fairly well-established notions of the coalescence of intent around the “idea” rather than a kinetic centre of gravity, etc. In trying to go beyond Lind and Boyd, Coerr seems merely to have been seduced by the  “quantum”-ness of his metaphor, which substitutes for any real innovation. (A lack of intellectual depth is somewhat betrayed by the conflation of the terms “quantum mechanics”, “quantum theory”, and “quantum physics”, as well as an inability to spell either Schrödinger or Gödel correctly.)

I don’t wish to be too harsh on LtCol Coerr. He, after all, is far better positioned to both comment on, and to theorise, the nature of warfare. Also, it’s not as if the realities and potentialities he describes are incorrect. Indeed, the opposite is true, and I largely agree with his reading of the trajectories of future conflict (although I would suggest that the state is far from dead yet …) My point is merely that the relatively uncritical transference of a highly complex model from the sub-atomic to the macro-level is problematic. Let’s not forget that Niels Bohr said, “If you aren’t confused by quantum physics, then you really haven’t understood it.” I have no doubt Coerr is aware of this, even if his article appears not to pay quite enough heed to the counter-intuitive nature of the scientific models on which he draws.

I quite like the idea of “probabilistic valences” as a way of conceptualising the complexities of human behaviour in a 5GW environment but I wonder at its utility and real validity. Several warnings were recently voiced during the CTlab symposium on Chaoplexic Warfare about the dangers of the subjective application of physical models (scientific paradigms?) to the actions and psychologies of humans in conflict situations. Coerr’s piece seems to illustrate this problem and, whilst he fits in quite genially with the chaoplexic trope, for example, and the netwar framework, I can’t see how he has advanced the debate. An interesting paper though – go read.