You might be better off considering whether technologies benefit the attacker or defender more, and the relationship between the state, the people and opposing states. The important part with the latter considerations is that opposing states are ok with leveling each other's cities and populations (generally) but a state fighting its own…
You might be better off considering whether technologies benefit the attacker or defender more, and the relationship between the state, the people and opposing states. The important part with the latter considerations is that opposing states are ok with leveling each other's cities and populations (generally) but a state fighting its own people is generally not. You can't rule dead people, or gain wealth from leveled cities after all, so you need to get the people to give up fighting without doing anything too destructive.
Drones benefit the offence more than defense for just the reasons you describe. Between opposing states the benefit is non-obvious if they both have them, but it is not obvious whether they benefit the state more than the people in a conflict between the two. On the one hand people can use drones to harass and damage the generally more expensive state military investments. On the other hand there are other fingers. Specifically, there are a lot of government employees whose only job is to keep drones flying around observing people and either reporting or actively attacking violators. They get paid to keep their fingers busy flying drones, while citizens are taking time away from their lives to do so.
Speaking of drones, shotgun based weapons are very effective against them. It is a move away from the normal round based rifled ammunition we see dominating today, but I suspect that if drones become a big issue active countermeasures such as are used by tanks to stop missiles today will become common place. Imagine an auto-tracking machine shotgun that can hold a few thousand rounds spraying down a swarm of drones (or infantry.)
All excellent points. The relative offense/defense advantage also has a big impact on social forms, of course.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of people vs. state, which usually only goes one way, but more state vs. state. Whichever society adopts an organizational pattern that best harmonizes with the capabilities of available technology will tend to outcompete the ones that don't.
A few things shift the populace vs state, or populace vs nobility, balance so that it doesn't go all one way.
Armor technology definitely shifts things towards the state/nobility, as it is expensive and difficult to make properly so difficult to get lots of it. Even hoplites often only had the shield and helmet.
The long bow (or other high poundage, relatively easy to manufacture bow) tend to push things back towards the populace as it negates some of the benefits of armor (at least armor less than fully encasing armor).
Guns tend to push towards the populace as well, because the ceiling of performance is pretty low. You can make a pretty functional gun at home, and at least in half free countries civilian accessible arms are not much different than military small arms.
Machine guns push the other way, but they are not a "give everybody one!" sort of weapon.
Tanks, bombers, cruise missiles, those all do very little to swing things between state and populace. As Afghanistan has been reminding the rest of the world for the past 200 odd years, if you aren't willing to just level cities, towns and villages, you aren't going to do much with those sorts of weapons off the formal battlefield. Some modern states are going to be willing to murder citizens with tanks (I can think of at least two...) but using them against a city basically says you are engaging in all out war against your own people, which... well it matters more for some states than others.
I bring that up because state vs people determines a great deal of what sort of governments obtain, not just state vs state. Note that the Greek states were relatively egalitarian (relatively) but were surrounded by hierarchical societies. Even the Athenian empire never got that large; the citizen phalanx was a defensively strong technology, but not well suited to occupying enemy nations long term.
The better comparison is the citizen infantry phalanx compared to the relatively light noble cavalry of the time. Small horses and light armor meant that a spear and shield formation that could reliably stand and receive the charge was going to win every time. (Which was largely true throughout history, even with heavier cavalry. The Roman maniples could absorb and repulse cavalry charges, although it was less than optimal.)
Good point but how many in the military (even if they could all be conscripted against the populace) vs. us?
Further, war is a matter of resources, so there needs to be a tax base for that. What if people stop paying because that is what is the war is about?
Another thought: division of labor. Some can farm, some can mine bitcoin, and some can play drone games.
In general government employees aren’t as smart as private sector workers. We’re all familiar with the phrase “ good enough for government work” I first became familiar with it as an employee of the USFS 25 years ago.
That's true, the populace almost always has numerical superiority. Certainly when dealing with the civil authorities. However, the populace has a bit of a hard time maintaining a full on revolt for long. People eventually go back to working, taking care of their kids, whatever, with only a small portion dedicating themselves to fighting.
Now, you can get some division of labor, but it is a little spotty because you have to have an active war going on for people to put up with their brother living at home, not working and fucking around with the drone all day. If it drags on too long, the guys resisting the state forces start to look a lot like a separate mob taking from the people, so that gets unpopular. Not impossible, but not obviously going to benefit one side or the other.
Now, the resource thing is the key the populace holds, and that is why the state cannot get nuts an just nuke a city to restore order. The state needs to have a very split and antagonistic populace before the rest of the populace is ok with killing a big chunk of another part. Otherwise people stop paying taxes, stop being willing to do much of anything the government needs, such as supplying soldiers. Without that significant split, the state vs populace conflict has to stay low intensity, men with guns on the ground sorts of conflict. That is very hard for the state to win decisively if there are a significant number of dissidents.
If you really want to interrogate that, the role of supply, resources and logistics is arguably more important than just weapons. Supplying the war effort determines a lot about what weapons are even viable, how many men you can keep in the field (elites vs multitudes), that sort of thing.
The Roman empire stopped using lorica segmentata partially because the damned brass bits kept breaking, so required a great deal of repair infrastructure. Mail might not be quite so protective, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper to maintain, which is a big deal a few thousand miles from home.
Another fun example is the English in the 100 years war. There is a convincing argument that the extent of their conquests followed the extent of their arrow supply chain. Thousands of people back in England were engaged in making packets of arrows to send to the front, via the channel and overland routes. The archers could blow through a ton of arrows per battle, and if the supply chain couldn't keep up the English just stopped winning. Always a problem for warfare focusing on missile weapons, and even more so mechanized weapons.
I would say the dream solution is I have my robots fight your robots and if your robots win I acquiesce to your demands. Thus no humans or property need be damaged.
You might be better off considering whether technologies benefit the attacker or defender more, and the relationship between the state, the people and opposing states. The important part with the latter considerations is that opposing states are ok with leveling each other's cities and populations (generally) but a state fighting its own people is generally not. You can't rule dead people, or gain wealth from leveled cities after all, so you need to get the people to give up fighting without doing anything too destructive.
Drones benefit the offence more than defense for just the reasons you describe. Between opposing states the benefit is non-obvious if they both have them, but it is not obvious whether they benefit the state more than the people in a conflict between the two. On the one hand people can use drones to harass and damage the generally more expensive state military investments. On the other hand there are other fingers. Specifically, there are a lot of government employees whose only job is to keep drones flying around observing people and either reporting or actively attacking violators. They get paid to keep their fingers busy flying drones, while citizens are taking time away from their lives to do so.
Speaking of drones, shotgun based weapons are very effective against them. It is a move away from the normal round based rifled ammunition we see dominating today, but I suspect that if drones become a big issue active countermeasures such as are used by tanks to stop missiles today will become common place. Imagine an auto-tracking machine shotgun that can hold a few thousand rounds spraying down a swarm of drones (or infantry.)
All excellent points. The relative offense/defense advantage also has a big impact on social forms, of course.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of people vs. state, which usually only goes one way, but more state vs. state. Whichever society adopts an organizational pattern that best harmonizes with the capabilities of available technology will tend to outcompete the ones that don't.
A few things shift the populace vs state, or populace vs nobility, balance so that it doesn't go all one way.
Armor technology definitely shifts things towards the state/nobility, as it is expensive and difficult to make properly so difficult to get lots of it. Even hoplites often only had the shield and helmet.
The long bow (or other high poundage, relatively easy to manufacture bow) tend to push things back towards the populace as it negates some of the benefits of armor (at least armor less than fully encasing armor).
Guns tend to push towards the populace as well, because the ceiling of performance is pretty low. You can make a pretty functional gun at home, and at least in half free countries civilian accessible arms are not much different than military small arms.
Machine guns push the other way, but they are not a "give everybody one!" sort of weapon.
Tanks, bombers, cruise missiles, those all do very little to swing things between state and populace. As Afghanistan has been reminding the rest of the world for the past 200 odd years, if you aren't willing to just level cities, towns and villages, you aren't going to do much with those sorts of weapons off the formal battlefield. Some modern states are going to be willing to murder citizens with tanks (I can think of at least two...) but using them against a city basically says you are engaging in all out war against your own people, which... well it matters more for some states than others.
I bring that up because state vs people determines a great deal of what sort of governments obtain, not just state vs state. Note that the Greek states were relatively egalitarian (relatively) but were surrounded by hierarchical societies. Even the Athenian empire never got that large; the citizen phalanx was a defensively strong technology, but not well suited to occupying enemy nations long term.
The better comparison is the citizen infantry phalanx compared to the relatively light noble cavalry of the time. Small horses and light armor meant that a spear and shield formation that could reliably stand and receive the charge was going to win every time. (Which was largely true throughout history, even with heavier cavalry. The Roman maniples could absorb and repulse cavalry charges, although it was less than optimal.)
Good point but how many in the military (even if they could all be conscripted against the populace) vs. us?
Further, war is a matter of resources, so there needs to be a tax base for that. What if people stop paying because that is what is the war is about?
Another thought: division of labor. Some can farm, some can mine bitcoin, and some can play drone games.
In general government employees aren’t as smart as private sector workers. We’re all familiar with the phrase “ good enough for government work” I first became familiar with it as an employee of the USFS 25 years ago.
That's true, the populace almost always has numerical superiority. Certainly when dealing with the civil authorities. However, the populace has a bit of a hard time maintaining a full on revolt for long. People eventually go back to working, taking care of their kids, whatever, with only a small portion dedicating themselves to fighting.
Now, you can get some division of labor, but it is a little spotty because you have to have an active war going on for people to put up with their brother living at home, not working and fucking around with the drone all day. If it drags on too long, the guys resisting the state forces start to look a lot like a separate mob taking from the people, so that gets unpopular. Not impossible, but not obviously going to benefit one side or the other.
Now, the resource thing is the key the populace holds, and that is why the state cannot get nuts an just nuke a city to restore order. The state needs to have a very split and antagonistic populace before the rest of the populace is ok with killing a big chunk of another part. Otherwise people stop paying taxes, stop being willing to do much of anything the government needs, such as supplying soldiers. Without that significant split, the state vs populace conflict has to stay low intensity, men with guns on the ground sorts of conflict. That is very hard for the state to win decisively if there are a significant number of dissidents.
If you really want to interrogate that, the role of supply, resources and logistics is arguably more important than just weapons. Supplying the war effort determines a lot about what weapons are even viable, how many men you can keep in the field (elites vs multitudes), that sort of thing.
The Roman empire stopped using lorica segmentata partially because the damned brass bits kept breaking, so required a great deal of repair infrastructure. Mail might not be quite so protective, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper to maintain, which is a big deal a few thousand miles from home.
Another fun example is the English in the 100 years war. There is a convincing argument that the extent of their conquests followed the extent of their arrow supply chain. Thousands of people back in England were engaged in making packets of arrows to send to the front, via the channel and overland routes. The archers could blow through a ton of arrows per battle, and if the supply chain couldn't keep up the English just stopped winning. Always a problem for warfare focusing on missile weapons, and even more so mechanized weapons.
I would say the dream solution is I have my robots fight your robots and if your robots win I acquiesce to your demands. Thus no humans or property need be damaged.