The Role of Technology in Warfare Essay -- Exploratory Essays Research

â€Å"History does not teach that better technology necessarily leads to victory. Rather victory goes to the commander who uses technology better, or who can deny the enemy his technology.† –Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (qtd. in Schwartau 540) As the future of warfare becomes more sophisticated, what will be the military technology of tomorrow? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, believes that there are three possible answers to that question: nuclear warfare, biological/chemical warfare, or cyber warfare. While nuclear and biological warfare is conducted on a battlefield, cyber warfare operates via the Internet and computers. All of these weapons have the same destructive potential, but the circumstances surrounding their uses and aftereffects are very different. With what new technology will a commander in World War III fight? Military commanders of the future will make greater use of state-of-the-art computer technology to fight wars, making the usage of conventional weapons obsolete. Since the beginning of military history, the commander who made the best use of technology always won. No matter if it was the arrows and tomahawks of the Native Americans against the guns and cannons of the European settlers, or the order given by President Harry Truman to drop two nuclear bombs on Japan, the army with the preeminent technology always came out on top. â€Å"A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT (qtd. in Hiroshima).† This quote by Harry Truman describes the power of the first option, nuclear warfare. German and Austrian scientists, working for Adolf Hitler, created plans for a nuclear weap... .... 2000. Works Consulted Clinton, William Jefferson. Address. Address concerning Computer Security. White House, Washington, DC. 7 January 2000. *Cohen, Fred. . 6 Feb. 2000. E-mail to the Author. 6 Feb. 2000. Douglass Jr., Joseph D. â€Å"Chemical and Biological Warfare Unmasked.† 2 Nov. 1995. InfoManage. 18 January 2000 Haeni, Reto. â€Å"Infowar.† January 1997: 16 pp. Icove, David, Karl Seger, and William VonStorch. â€Å"Computer Crime: A Crimefighter’s Handbook.† Sebastopol: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1995. Stocker, Gerfried, and Christine Schà ¶pf. â€Å"Infowar.† Austria: SpringerWeienNewYork, 1998. United States. President of the United States. National Plan for Information Systems Protection. Washington: 2000.