[D66] The Kill Chain: A new era of world war

[R.O.]

wsws.org:

The Kill Chain: A new era of world war
By Shuvu Batta
29 August 2020

The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare by 
Christian Brose is a book with an intended audience within the Pentagon 
and the arms industry, “Ringing the alarm” for US imperialism’s need to 
make a rapid and qualitative development of its military in order to 
achieve its ambition of global hegemony.

Brose, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
begins his book describing a conversation he had with the late 
Republican Senator John McCain on the form that an increasingly likely 
war between the United States and China would take:

“America’s forward bases in places like Japan and Guam would be 
inundated with waves of precise ballistic and cruise missiles.”

“[United States] carriers and their escort ships might shoot down some 
of the missiles, but there would be so many that some could get through 
and knock the carriers out of the fight by cratering their flight decks, 
damaging their control towers, or destroying their aircraft before they 
even got airborne. It is also possible that a hit could be fatal, 
sending five thousand Americans and a $13 billion ship to the bottom of 
the ocean.”

“McCain and I paused and considered the potential scale of this 
disaster. Thousands of Americans lost in action. American ships sunk. 
Bases reduced to smoking holes in the ground. Aircraft and satellites 
shot out of the sky. A war that could be lost in a matter of hours or 
days even as the United States planned to spend weeks and months moving 
into position to fight.”

Why would such a war break out? Brose writes:

“China is becoming America’s peer, and it could become more than that. 
It is integrated into the global economy and developing its own domestic 
sources of technological development, not just copycat industries but 
increasingly innovative and world-leading companies. China has already 
surpassed the United States in purchasing power parity, and it is 
projected to have the world’s largest gross domestic product by as early 
as 2030. The last time the United States faced a competitor, or even a 
group of competitors, with greater economic power than its own was in 
the nineteenth century, before our own rise to global predominance. And 
when it comes to China’s potential to generate even greater power, the 
United States has never faced a challenge of that scale in its entire 
history.”

“The Chinese Communist Party aims to become the dominant power in Asia 
and in the world, and it believes that for China to win, America must 
lose. We have to lose the race for advanced technology. We have to lose 
jobs and influence in the global economy. We have to lose partners who 
share our interests and values. We have to lose the ability to stand in 
the way of the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to make more of the 
world safe for its model of high-tech authoritarianism. And as the 
balance of power continues to shift out of America’s favor, the Chinese 
Communist Party will likely become more expansive in its ambitions, more 
assertive in its pursuit of them, and more capable of getting its way, 
no matter how much that harms Americans.”

Increasingly concerned over China’s economic development and terrified 
by its rapid technological advances, which put a question mark on the 
Washington’s “overwhelming” military superiority, Brose and McCain wrote 
a letter in October 2017 to then-Secretary of Defense James “Mad-Dog” 
Mattis on the topic of the National Defense Strategy:

“We no longer enjoy the wide margins of power we once had,” the letter 
argued, because America’s military advantage had “declined 
precipitously” as great-power competitors, primarily China, were 
modernizing their forces and eroding America’s military dominance. “We 
cannot do everything we want everywhere,” it stated. “We must choose. We 
must prioritize.” And though money was vital, we could not “‘buy our way 
out’ of our current predicament.” The new defense strategy, McCain wrote 
Mattis, was “perhaps the last opportunity to develop an effective 
approach” to China before it was too late.

Brose’s staff met regularly with Mattis’ staff, and the emphasis on 
preparing and executing a massive overhaul of the US military, with 
focus on integrating the latest developments in information technology, 
was a cornerstone of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which built on 
the National Security Strategy announced by the Trump Administration in 
December 2017. The document clearly announced the revival of 
“Great-Power Conflict,” i.e., preparation for a Third World War, with 
particular focus on China.

The Defense Strategy calls for building a more lethal force, with 
emphasis on modernizing key capabilities of nuclear forces, space and 
cyberspace, missile defense, and in particular, command, control, 
communications, computers and intelligence, surveillance, and 
reconnaissance (C4ISR), as well as autonomous systems.

Brose reveals in his book that, over the past several decades, the 
United States military machine, serviced through a network of defense 
contractors, lobbyists and Congressmen, has gobbled up trillions of 
dollars, accumulating an excess of fat rather than muscle. Vast sums 
were directed into money-pits like the F-35 and incremental hardware 
upgrades to outdated systems, whereas rival militaries like that of 
China were utilizing the developments in data-technology to create a 
“smarter” military, one which can close the “kill chain” at lightning speed.

The kill chain and the “Information Revolution”

According to Brose, the kill chain is a military term linked to the 
“Information Revolution” starting in the 1980s; it means the process of 
analysis, planning, and execution. Prior to the Information Revolution, 
the kill chain was localized to single military platforms, for example 
“the process of understanding where an enemy aircraft was, deciding what 
to do about it, and then acting against it all occurred within one 
fighter jet or air defense system.” The Information Revolution, which 
had as its foundation the development of the integrated circuit, has led 
to further world-historic developments—primarily the development of the 
internet and artificial intelligence. What these technologies allow for 
is “networked warfare”; a network of nuclear missiles, for example, can 
all be directed under one system, some under autonomous control.

Brose is now the head of strategy for Andruil Industries, which states 
that it is a tech company composed of “a team of experts from Oculus, 
Palantir, General Atomics, SpaceX, Tesla and Google exploiting 
breakthroughs in consumer and commercial technology” specifically for 
military purposes. While the US military has been slow to integrate the 
latest developments in data technology and AI, Silicon Valley-based tech 
firms have been pioneers in this field. Having achieved a high level of 
centralization, they are moving closer and closer towards the state.

Brose in large part has written the book in order “bring home” the 
prodigal son; help return Silicon Valley to the US military from which 
it traces its origins. As historian Margaret O’Mara has observed, 
“Defense contracts during and after World War II turned Silicon Valley 
from a somnolent landscape of fruit orchards into a hub of electronics 
production and innovations ranging from mainframes to microprocessors to 
the internet.”

Arguing for the military potential of consumer technology, Brose writes:

Many American homes are now fitted with a network of low-cost sensors 
made by companies such as Nest (owned by Google) and Ring (owned by 
Amazon) that give one person with a mobile device real-time situational 
awareness of their most important places, whereas the average US 
military base is still defended by large numbers of people either 
standing watch or staring at rows of video surveillance monitors, 
stacked up like Hollywood Squares. Similarly, many Americans drive 
vehicles equipped with sensors that tell them everything that is going 
on around the vehicle at all times, whereas most American military 
vehicles do not have the same capabilities.

He further notes the increasing monopolization of Silicon Valley:

Over the past fifteen years, major technology companies have bought 
dozens of technology start-ups: Facebook, for example, has bought 
Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR, among others, while Google has 
bought far more, including Android, YouTube, Waze, Nest, and DeepMind.

This process has been accompanied by the tech giants’ rapid integration 
with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Research published on 
July 7, 2020 by the technology accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry 
revealed that the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement 
agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the 
Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have secured 
thousands of deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Hewlett 
Packard, Facebook, among others.

Microsoft is currently the leader in gobbling up government contracts 
and has also seemingly won the battle for the $10 Billion JEDI contract 
with the Pentagon, which will overhaul the military’s internet 
infrastructure. However, this is currently in dispute as its rival 
Amazon has won a federal court case halting the contract for review. 
Amazon recently announced the establishment of a space unit called 
Aerospace and Satellite Solutions, led by former US Air Force Major 
General Clint Crosier. The unit is responsible for the development of 
rocket launches, human spaceflight support, robotic systems, mission 
control operations, space stations, satellite networks and more. Bezos’ 
space company Blue Origin also has a NASA contract worth $579 million.

The US military has also encouraged smaller startups to get in on the 
action. The US Air Force has selected 54 smaller companies to “develop, 
test and integrate new capabilities for the Advanced Battle Management 
Systems (ABMS).” The ABMS aims to develop an “internet of things” where 
systems in all domains (air, land, sea, space, cyber, and 
electromagnetic spectrum) can connect to disseminate information to 
personnel.

The Silicon Valley startup Space X recently launched NASA astronauts 
into space, marking a new era of public-private partnerships. On May 20, 
Space X signed a three-year deal with the US military to test the 
company’s “Starlink” program, which aims to “build a constellation of 
small satellites in low-earth orbit that can deliver high-speed 
communications and data networks to every part of the planet at all times.”

Over the past several years, Silicon Valley companies have sent numerous 
satellites into space, with plans to launch tens of thousands more.

Brose writes:

 From hundreds of miles away, commercial satellites can see objects on 
Earth in minute detail, and they may soon be able to identify individual 
faces. The number of these satellites grows by the hundreds every year. 
Silicon Valley is largely responsible for soon-to-be thousands of small 
satellites that will create an unblinking eye over the entire Earth, 
resulting in more real-time surveillance of the planet than ever before. 
Indeed, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a US intelligence 
agency that currently has a total of 14,500 personnel, recently 
estimated that it would need more than 8 million people just to analyze 
all of the imagery of the globe that will be generated in the next 
twenty years.


The data gathered by the sharp mechanical eyes of satellites in space is 
being increasingly used to surveil the world for the primary purpose of 
repression and war; the capitalist class has wrapped the Earth in “The 
Kill Chain.”

The threat of a Third World War

The US military’s plans for “Great-Power Conflict,” primarily with 
China, have reached an extremely high level. The US ruling class is 
aware of its inadequacies and, while masses of American workers confront 
poverty, is spending trillions to prepare for the eruption of World War III.

A simulation called “Plan A” by researchers at Princeton’s Program on 
Science and Global Security, shows how the use of one so-called tactical 
or low-yield nuclear weapon could lead to a global nuclear war which 
would result in over 90 million deaths and injuries within three hours. 
At our current stage, the outbreak of war will quickly become a world 
catastrophe. The development of “battle networks” and long range 
missiles, means that weapons capable of leveling entire cities and 
countries will be deployed in practically a flash.

War will take place on all fronts, from the seas, the earth, and the 
heavens. With the use of nuclear weapons, over 7.5 billion human beings, 
themselves forged through billions of years of historical development, 
could be destroyed in a matter of days.

The true implication of war is never uttered in Brose’s book. He, 
alongside the capitalist class which he represents, is driven by the 
imperative of securing US profit interests. They see war as a means to 
stop China’s economic expansion, exemplified by the “Belt and Road 
Initiative,” thus removing its main rival and conquering the world 
market. Meanwhile the Chinese capitalists cannot halt their aims for 
expansion because they too are driven by the need to accumulate profit, 
thus they have resorted to building up their military arsenal to 
“defend” themselves from the US. However, in the era of nuclear weapons, 
there is no such thing as defense, simply Mutually Assured Destruction.

The great revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, delivered a speech in 1926 to the 
First All-Union Congress of the Society of Friends of Radio, explaining 
why capitalism is incompatible with the needs of humanity:

I remember a time when men wrote that the development of the aircraft 
would put an end to war, because it would draw the whole population into 
military operations, would bring to ruin the economic and cultural life 
of entire countries, etc. In fact, however, the invention of a flying 
machine heavier than air opened a new and crueler chapter in the history 
of militarism. There is no doubt that now, too, we are approaching the 
beginning of a new and crueler chapter in the history of militarism. 
There is no doubt that now, too, we are approaching the beginning of a 
still more frightful and bloody chapter. Technique and science have 
their own logic—the logic of the cognition of nature and the mastering 
of it in the interests of man. But technique and science develop not in 
a vacuum but in human society, which consists of classes. The ruling 
class, the possessing class, controls technique and through it controls 
nature. Technique in itself cannot be called either militaristic or 
pacifistic. In a society in which the ruling class is militaristic, 
technique is in the service of militarism.

Within little more than a decade, the most terrible bloodbath in 
history, World War II, began, destroying over 70 million lives. Humanity 
is now threatened with a war of incomparably greater magnitude.

The National Security Strategy document states that “The Internet is an 
American invention, and it should reflect our values as it continues to 
transform the future for all nations and all generations.”

The reality is that the internet and technology in general are a 
collective product of human labor, which transcends all nations, races, 
and ethnicities. While the capitalist class advances the politics of 
nationalism and division, of which war is the most extreme form, the 
working class must advance the politics of unity, breaking down all 
national divisions, uniting workers of every country in a common 
struggle to put an end to capitalism and create a world where science is 
developed not in service of war, but to ensure peace and prosperity for all.