thenation--2020-08-27--The Pentagon’s Next Project: Automated War

With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of US service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal , the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations .
Such devices , known in the military as “ autonomous weapons systems , ” include robotic sentries , battlefield-surveillance drones , and autonomous submarines .
So far , in other words , robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields .
Now , however , in a giant leap of faith , the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level—by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weapons , but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems .
Admittedly , those systems are still in the development stage , but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency .
Every component of a modern general staff—including battle planning , intelligence-gathering , logistics , communications , and decision-making—is , according to the Pentagon ’ s latest plans , to be turned over to complex arrangements of sensors , computers , and software .
All these will then be integrated into a “ system of systems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Command-and-Control , or JADC2 ( since acronyms remain the essence of military life ) .
Eventually , that amalgam of systems may indeed assume most of the functions currently performed by American generals and their senior staff officers .
The notion of using machines to make command-level decisions is not , of course , an entirely new one .
It has , in truth , been a long time coming .
During the Cold War , following the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles ( ICBMs ) with extremely short flight times , both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagine mechanical systems that would control such nuclear weaponry in the event of human incapacity .
In Stanley Kubrick ’ s satiric 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove , for example , the fictional Russian leader Dimitri Kissov reveals that the Soviet Union has installed a “ doomsday machine ” capable of obliterating all human life that would detonate automatically should the country come under attack by American nuclear forces .
Efforts by crazed anti-Soviet US Air Force officers to provoke a war with Moscow then succeed in triggering that machine and so bring about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they might experience a surprise attack of just this sort , the Soviets later did install a semi-automatic retaliatory system they dubbed “ Perimeter , ” designed to launch Soviet ICBMs in the event that sensors detected nuclear explosions and all communications from Moscow had been silenced .
Some analysts believe that an upgraded version of Perimeter is still in operation , leaving us in an all-too-real version of a Strangelovian world .
In yet another sci-fi version of such automated command systems , the 1983 film WarGames , starring Matthew Broderick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supercomputer called the War Operations Plan Response , or WOPR ( pronounced “ whopper ” ) installed at the North American Aerospace Command ( NORAD ) headquarters in Colorado .
When the Broderick character hacks into it and starts playing what he believes is a game called “ World War III , ” the computer concludes an actual Soviet attack is underway and launches a nuclear retaliatory response .
Although fictitious , the movie accurately depicts many aspects of the US nuclear command-control-and-communications ( NC3 ) system , which was then and still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both real and imagined , were relatively primitive by today ’ s standards , being capable solely of determining that a nuclear attack was under way and ordering a catastrophic response .
Now , as a result of vast improvements in artificial intelligence ( AI ) and machine learning , machines can collect and assess massive amounts of sensor data , swiftly detect key trends and patterns , and potentially issue orders to combat units as to where to attack and when .
The substitution of intelligent machines for humans at senior command @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argue , because an exponential growth in sensor information combined with the increasing speed of warfare is making it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of crucial battlefield developments .
If future scenarios prove accurate , battles that once unfolded over days or weeks could transpire in the space of hours , or even minutes , while battlefield information will be pouring in as multitudinous data points , overwhelming staff officers .
Only advanced computers , it is claimed , could process so much information and make informed combat decisions within the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the expansion of sensor data may apply to any form of combat , but especially to the most terrifying of them all , nuclear war .
When ICBMs were the principal means of such combat , decision makers had up to 30 minutes between the time a missile was launched and the moment of detonation in which to determine whether a potential attack was real or merely a false satellite reading ( as did sometimes occur during the Cold War ) .
Now , that may not sound like much time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missiles , such assessment times could shrink to as little as five minutes .
Under such circumstances , it ’ s a lot to expect even the most alert decision-makers to reach an informed judgment on the nature of a potential attack .
Hence the appeal ( to some ) of automated decision-making systems .
“ Attack-time compression has placed America ’ s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough , ” military analysts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin argued at War on the Rocks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence , with predetermined response decisions , that detects , decides , and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.
” This notion , that an artificial intelligence-powered device—in essence , a more intelligent version of the doomsday machine or the WOPR—should be empowered to assess enemy behavior and then , on the basis of “ predetermined response options , ” decide humanity ’ s fate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community of military analysts ( as it should for the rest of us as well ) .
Nevertheless , American strategists continue to argue that battlefield assessment and decision-making—for both conventional and nuclear warfare—should increasingly be delegated to machines .
“ AI-powered intelligence systems may provide the ability to integrate and sort through large troves of data from different sources and geographic locations to identify patterns and highlight useful information , ” the Congressional Research Service noted in a November 2019 summary of Pentagon thinking .
“ As the complexity of AI systems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AI algorithms may also be capable of providing commanders with a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace , in turn enabling faster adaptation to complex events.
” The key wording there is “ a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace.
” This might leave the impression that human generals and admirals ( not to speak of their commander in chief ) will still be making the ultimate life-and-death decisions for both their own forces and the planet .
Given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combat with China and/or Russia , however , humans may no longer have the time or ability to analyze the battlespace themselves and so will come to rely on AI algorithms for such assessments .
As a result , human commanders may simply find themselves endorsing decisions made by machines—and so , in the end , become superfluous .
Despite whatever misgivings they may have about their future job security , America ’ s top generals are moving swiftly to develop and deploy that JADC2 automated command mechanism .
Overseen by the Air @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a computer-driven amalgam of devices for collecting real-time intelligence on enemy forces from vast numbers of sensor devices ( satellites , ground radars , electronic listening posts , and so on ) , processing that data into actionable combat information , and providing precise attack instructions to every combat unit and weapons system engaged in a conflict—whether belonging to the Army , Navy , Air Force , Marine Corps , or the newly formed Space Force and Cyber Command .
What , exactly , the JADC2 will consist of is not widely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ component systems are still shrouded in secrecy and partly because much of the essential technology is still in the development stage .
Delegated with responsibility for overseeing the project , the Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin and other large defense contractors to design and develop key elements of the system .
One such building block is its Advanced Battle Management System ( ABMS ) , a data-collection and distribution system intended to provide fighter pilots with up-to-the-minute data on enemy positions and help guide their combat moves .
Another key component @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Missile Defense Battle Command System ( IBCS ) , designed to connect radar systems to anti-aircraft and missile-defense launchers and provide them with precise firing instructions .
Over time , the Air Force and its multiple contractors will seek to integrate ABMS and IBCS into a giant network of systems connecting every sensor , shooter , and commander in the country ’ s armed forces—a military “ internet of things , ” as some have put it .
To test this concept and provide an example of how it might operate in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live-fire artillery exercise this August in Germany using components ( or facsimiles ) of the future JADC2 system .
In the first stage of the test , satellite images of ( presumed ) Russian troop positions were sent to an Army ground terminal , where an AI software program called Prometheus combed through the data to select enemy targets .
Next , another AI program called SHOT computed the optimal match of available Army weaponry to those intended targets and sent this information , along with precise firing coordinates , to the Army @ @ @ @ @ @ @ System ( AFATDS ) for immediate action , where human commanders could choose to implement it or not .
In the exercise , those human commanders had the mental space to give the matter a moment ’ s thought ; in a shooting war , they might just leave everything to the machines , as the system ’ s designers clearly intend them to do .
In the future , the Army is planning even more ambitious tests of this evolving technology under an initiative called Project Convergence .
From what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will undertake ever more complex exercises involving satellites , Air Force fighters equipped with the ABMS system , Army helicopters , drones , artillery pieces , and tactical vehicles .
Eventually , all of this will form the underlying “ architecture ” of the JADC2 , linking every military sensor system to every combat unit and weapons system—leaving the generals with little to do but sit by and watch .
Why Robot Generals Could Get It Wrong Given the complexity of modern warfare and the challenge of time compression in future combat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human commanders with robotic ones is certainly understandable .
Robot generals and admirals might theoretically be able to process staggering amounts of information in brief periods of time , while keeping track of both friendly and enemy forces and devising optimal ways to counter enemy moves on a future battlefield .
But there are many good reasons to doubt the reliability of robot decision-makers and the wisdom of using them in place of human officers .
To begin with , many of these technologies are still in their infancy , and almost all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be easily anticipated nor understood .
And don ’ t forget that even advanced algorithms can be fooled , or “ spoofed , ” by skilled professionals .
In addition , unlike humans , AI-enabled decision-making systems will lack an ability to assess intent or context .
Does a sudden enemy troop deployment , for example , indicate an imminent attack , a bluff , or just a normal rotation of forces ?
Human analysts can use their understanding of the current political moment and the actors involved to help guide their assessment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability and may assume the worst , initiating military action that could have been avoided .
Such a problem will only be compounded by the “ training ” such decision-making algorithms will undergo as they are adapted to military situations .
Just as facial recognition software has proved to be tainted by an over-reliance on images of white males in the training process—making them less adept at recognizing , say , African-American women—military decision-making algorithms are likely to be distorted by an over-reliance on the combat-oriented scenarios selected by American military professionals for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a natural inclination of such officers—after all , who wants to be caught unprepared for a possible enemy surprise attack ?
—and such biases will undoubtedly become part of the “ menus of viable courses of action ” provided by decision-making robots .
Once integrated into decision-making algorithms , such biases could , in turn , prove exceedingly dangerous in any future encounters between US and Russian troops in Europe or American and Chinese forces in Asia .
A clash of this sort might , after all , arise at any time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incident that rapidly gains momentum—a sudden clash between US and Chinese warships off Taiwan , for example , or between American and Russian patrols in one of the Baltic states .
Neither side may have intended to ignite a full-scale conflict and leaders on both sides might normally move to negotiate a cease-fire .
But remember , these will no longer simply be human conflicts .
In the wake of such an incident , the JADC2 could detect some enemy move that it determines poses an imminent risk to allied forces and so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planes , missiles , and artillery , escalating the conflict and foreclosing any chance of an early negotiated settlement .
Such prospects become truly frightening when what ’ s at stake is the onset of nuclear war .
It ’ s hard to imagine any conflict among the major powers starting out as a nuclear war , but it ’ s far easier to envision a scenario in which the great powers—after having become embroiled in a conventional conflict—reach a point where one side or the other considers the use of atomic arms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doctrine , in fact , has always held out the possibility of using so-called tactical nuclear weapons in response to a massive Soviet ( now Russian ) assault in Europe .
Russian military doctrine , it is widely assumed , incorporates similar options .
Under such circumstances , a future JADC2 could misinterpret enemy moves as signaling preparation for a nuclear launch and order a preemptive strike by US nuclear forces , thereby igniting World War III .
War is a nasty , brutal activity and , given almost two decades of failed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ the war on terror , ” causing thousands of American casualties ( both physical and mental ) , it ’ s easy to understand why robot enthusiasts are so eager to see another kind of mentality take over American war-making .
As a start , they contend , especially in a pandemic world , that it ’ s only humane to replace human soldiers on the battlefield with robots and so diminish human casualties ( at least among combatants ) .
This claim does not , of course , address the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack the ability to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants on the battlefield and so can not be trusted to comply with the laws of war or international humanitarian law—which , at least theoretically , protect civilians from unnecessary harm—and so should be banned .
Fraught as all of that may be on future battlefields , replacing generals and admirals with robots is another matter altogether .
Not only do legal and moral arguments arise with a vengeance , as the survival of major civilian populations could be put at risk by computer-derived combat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guarantee that American GIs would suffer fewer casualties in the battles that ensued .
Maybe it ’ s time , then , for Congress to ask some tough questions about the advisability of automating combat decision-making before this country pours billions of additional taxpayer dollars into an enterprise that could , in fact , lead to the end of the world as we know it .
Maybe it ’ s time as well for the leaders of China , Russia , and this country to limit or ban the deployment of hypersonic missiles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decisions for humanity into just a few minutes , thereby justifying the automation of such fateful judgments .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of US service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields. Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level—by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems.
Admittedly, those systems are still in the development stage, but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency. Every component of a modern general staff—including battle planning, intelligence-gathering, logistics, communications, and decision-making—is, according to the Pentagon’s latest plans, to be turned over to complex arrangements of sensors, computers, and software. All these will then be integrated into a “system of systems,” now dubbed the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control, or JADC2 (since acronyms remain the essence of military life). Eventually, that amalgam of systems may indeed assume most of the functions currently performed by American generals and their senior staff officers.
The notion of using machines to make command-level decisions is not, of course, an entirely new one. It has, in truth, been a long time coming. During the Cold War, following the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with extremely short flight times, both military strategists and science-fiction writers began to imagine mechanical systems that would control such nuclear weaponry in the event of human incapacity.
In Stanley Kubrick’s satiric 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, for example, the fictional Russian leader Dimitri Kissov reveals that the Soviet Union has installed a “doomsday machine” capable of obliterating all human life that would detonate automatically should the country come under attack by American nuclear forces. Efforts by crazed anti-Soviet US Air Force officers to provoke a war with Moscow then succeed in triggering that machine and so bring about human annihilation. In reality, fearing that they might experience a surprise attack of just this sort, the Soviets later did install a semi-automatic retaliatory system they dubbed “Perimeter,” designed to launch Soviet ICBMs in the event that sensors detected nuclear explosions and all communications from Moscow had been silenced. Some analysts believe that an upgraded version of Perimeter is still in operation, leaving us in an all-too-real version of a Strangelovian world.
In yet another sci-fi version of such automated command systems, the 1983 film WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker, portrayed a supercomputer called the War Operations Plan Response, or WOPR (pronounced “whopper”) installed at the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado. When the Broderick character hacks into it and starts playing what he believes is a game called “World War III,” the computer concludes an actual Soviet attack is underway and launches a nuclear retaliatory response. Although fictitious, the movie accurately depicts many aspects of the US nuclear command-control-and-communications (NC3) system, which was then and still remains highly automated. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Such devices, both real and imagined, were relatively primitive by today’s standards, being capable solely of determining that a nuclear attack was under way and ordering a catastrophic response. Now, as a result of vast improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, machines can collect and assess massive amounts of sensor data, swiftly detect key trends and patterns, and potentially issue orders to combat units as to where to attack and when.
Time Compression and Human Fallibility
The substitution of intelligent machines for humans at senior command levels is becoming essential, US strategists argue, because an exponential growth in sensor information combined with the increasing speed of warfare is making it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of crucial battlefield developments. If future scenarios prove accurate, battles that once unfolded over days or weeks could transpire in the space of hours, or even minutes, while battlefield information will be pouring in as multitudinous data points, overwhelming staff officers. Only advanced computers, it is claimed, could process so much information and make informed combat decisions within the necessary time frame. Current Issue View our current issue
Such time compression and the expansion of sensor data may apply to any form of combat, but especially to the most terrifying of them all, nuclear war. When ICBMs were the principal means of such combat, decision makers had up to 30 minutes between the time a missile was launched and the moment of detonation in which to determine whether a potential attack was real or merely a false satellite reading (as did sometimes occur during the Cold War). Now, that may not sound like much time, but with the recent introduction of hypersonic missiles, such assessment times could shrink to as little as five minutes. Under such circumstances, it’s a lot to expect even the most alert decision-makers to reach an informed judgment on the nature of a potential attack. Hence the appeal (to some) of automated decision-making systems.
“Attack-time compression has placed America’s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough,” military analysts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin argued at War on the Rocks, a security-oriented website. “Thus, it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.”
This notion, that an artificial intelligence-powered device—in essence, a more intelligent version of the doomsday machine or the WOPR—should be empowered to assess enemy behavior and then, on the basis of “predetermined response options,” decide humanity’s fate, has naturally produced some unease in the community of military analysts (as it should for the rest of us as well). Nevertheless, American strategists continue to argue that battlefield assessment and decision-making—for both conventional and nuclear warfare—should increasingly be delegated to machines.
“AI-powered intelligence systems may provide the ability to integrate and sort through large troves of data from different sources and geographic locations to identify patterns and highlight useful information,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a November 2019 summary of Pentagon thinking. “As the complexity of AI systems matures,” it added, “AI algorithms may also be capable of providing commanders with a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace, in turn enabling faster adaptation to complex events.”
The key wording there is “a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace.” This might leave the impression that human generals and admirals (not to speak of their commander in chief) will still be making the ultimate life-and-death decisions for both their own forces and the planet. Given such anticipated attack-time compression in future high-intensity combat with China and/or Russia, however, humans may no longer have the time or ability to analyze the battlespace themselves and so will come to rely on AI algorithms for such assessments. As a result, human commanders may simply find themselves endorsing decisions made by machines—and so, in the end, become superfluous.
Creating Robot Generals
Despite whatever misgivings they may have about their future job security, America’s top generals are moving swiftly to develop and deploy that JADC2 automated command mechanism. Overseen by the Air Force, it’s proving to be a computer-driven amalgam of devices for collecting real-time intelligence on enemy forces from vast numbers of sensor devices (satellites, ground radars, electronic listening posts, and so on), processing that data into actionable combat information, and providing precise attack instructions to every combat unit and weapons system engaged in a conflict—whether belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or the newly formed Space Force and Cyber Command.
What, exactly, the JADC2 will consist of is not widely known, partly because many of its component systems are still shrouded in secrecy and partly because much of the essential technology is still in the development stage. Delegated with responsibility for overseeing the project, the Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin and other large defense contractors to design and develop key elements of the system.
One such building block is its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), a data-collection and distribution system intended to provide fighter pilots with up-to-the-minute data on enemy positions and help guide their combat moves. Another key component is the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), designed to connect radar systems to anti-aircraft and missile-defense launchers and provide them with precise firing instructions. Over time, the Air Force and its multiple contractors will seek to integrate ABMS and IBCS into a giant network of systems connecting every sensor, shooter, and commander in the country’s armed forces—a military “internet of things,” as some have put it.
To test this concept and provide an example of how it might operate in the future, the Army conducted a live-fire artillery exercise this August in Germany using components (or facsimiles) of the future JADC2 system. In the first stage of the test, satellite images of (presumed) Russian troop positions were sent to an Army ground terminal, where an AI software program called Prometheus combed through the data to select enemy targets. Next, another AI program called SHOT computed the optimal match of available Army weaponry to those intended targets and sent this information, along with precise firing coordinates, to the Army’s Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) for immediate action, where human commanders could choose to implement it or not. In the exercise, those human commanders had the mental space to give the matter a moment’s thought; in a shooting war, they might just leave everything to the machines, as the system’s designers clearly intend them to do.
In the future, the Army is planning even more ambitious tests of this evolving technology under an initiative called Project Convergence. From what’s been said publicly about it, Convergence will undertake ever more complex exercises involving satellites, Air Force fighters equipped with the ABMS system, Army helicopters, drones, artillery pieces, and tactical vehicles. Eventually, all of this will form the underlying “architecture” of the JADC2, linking every military sensor system to every combat unit and weapons system—leaving the generals with little to do but sit by and watch.
Why Robot Generals Could Get It Wrong
Given the complexity of modern warfare and the challenge of time compression in future combat, the urge of American strategists to replace human commanders with robotic ones is certainly understandable. Robot generals and admirals might theoretically be able to process staggering amounts of information in brief periods of time, while keeping track of both friendly and enemy forces and devising optimal ways to counter enemy moves on a future battlefield. But there are many good reasons to doubt the reliability of robot decision-makers and the wisdom of using them in place of human officers.
To begin with, many of these technologies are still in their infancy, and almost all are prone to malfunctions that can neither be easily anticipated nor understood. And don’t forget that even advanced algorithms can be fooled, or “spoofed,” by skilled professionals.
In addition, unlike humans, AI-enabled decision-making systems will lack an ability to assess intent or context. Does a sudden enemy troop deployment, for example, indicate an imminent attack, a bluff, or just a normal rotation of forces? Human analysts can use their understanding of the current political moment and the actors involved to help guide their assessment of the situation. Machines lack that ability and may assume the worst, initiating military action that could have been avoided.
Such a problem will only be compounded by the “training” such decision-making algorithms will undergo as they are adapted to military situations. Just as facial recognition software has proved to be tainted by an over-reliance on images of white males in the training process—making them less adept at recognizing, say, African-American women—military decision-making algorithms are likely to be distorted by an over-reliance on the combat-oriented scenarios selected by American military professionals for training purposes. “Worst-case thinking” is a natural inclination of such officers—after all, who wants to be caught unprepared for a possible enemy surprise attack?—and such biases will undoubtedly become part of the “menus of viable courses of action” provided by decision-making robots.
Once integrated into decision-making algorithms, such biases could, in turn, prove exceedingly dangerous in any future encounters between US and Russian troops in Europe or American and Chinese forces in Asia. A clash of this sort might, after all, arise at any time, thanks to some misunderstanding or local incident that rapidly gains momentum—a sudden clash between US and Chinese warships off Taiwan, for example, or between American and Russian patrols in one of the Baltic states. Neither side may have intended to ignite a full-scale conflict and leaders on both sides might normally move to negotiate a cease-fire. But remember, these will no longer simply be human conflicts. In the wake of such an incident, the JADC2 could detect some enemy move that it determines poses an imminent risk to allied forces and so immediately launch an all-out attack by American planes, missiles, and artillery, escalating the conflict and foreclosing any chance of an early negotiated settlement.
Such prospects become truly frightening when what’s at stake is the onset of nuclear war. It’s hard to imagine any conflict among the major powers starting out as a nuclear war, but it’s far easier to envision a scenario in which the great powers—after having become embroiled in a conventional conflict—reach a point where one side or the other considers the use of atomic arms to stave off defeat. American military doctrine, in fact, has always held out the possibility of using so-called tactical nuclear weapons in response to a massive Soviet (now Russian) assault in Europe. Russian military doctrine, it is widely assumed, incorporates similar options. Under such circumstances, a future JADC2 could misinterpret enemy moves as signaling preparation for a nuclear launch and order a preemptive strike by US nuclear forces, thereby igniting World War III.
War is a nasty, brutal activity and, given almost two decades of failed conflicts that have gone under the label of “the war on terror,” causing thousands of American casualties (both physical and mental), it’s easy to understand why robot enthusiasts are so eager to see another kind of mentality take over American war-making. As a start, they contend, especially in a pandemic world, that it’s only humane to replace human soldiers on the battlefield with robots and so diminish human casualties (at least among combatants). This claim does not, of course, address the argument that robot soldiers and drone aircraft lack the ability to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants on the battlefield and so cannot be trusted to comply with the laws of war or international humanitarian law—which, at least theoretically, protect civilians from unnecessary harm—and so should be banned.
Fraught as all of that may be on future battlefields, replacing generals and admirals with robots is another matter altogether. Not only do legal and moral arguments arise with a vengeance, as the survival of major civilian populations could be put at risk by computer-derived combat decisions, but there’s no guarantee that American GIs would suffer fewer casualties in the battles that ensued. Maybe it’s time, then, for Congress to ask some tough questions about the advisability of automating combat decision-making before this country pours billions of additional taxpayer dollars into an enterprise that could, in fact, lead to the end of the world as we know it. Maybe it’s time as well for the leaders of China, Russia, and this country to limit or ban the deployment of hypersonic missiles and other weaponry that will compress life-and-death decisions for humanity into just a few minutes, thereby justifying the automation of such fateful judgments.


thenation--2020-08-27--LIVE CHAT: Join Us for the Republican National Convention

From the jump , the Republican National Convention , unsurprisingly , has been an unrelenting tsunami of hate , fearmongering , and , most of all , lies .
The Republicans have doubled down on their fall 2020 campaign strategy : Go hard on the economy and try to trick voters into believing Trump has improved rather than destroyed it .
Republicans completed the final step in the complete transfer of power over the Republican Party to Trump when the party decided not to adopt a new platform , making it ever more clear—seriously , how much more clear can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party of extremists that elevates conspiracy theorists , anti-Semites , anti-suffragists , and all-around monsters—and this is their convention .
So it ’ s unsurprising that as protests responding to the police shooting of Jacob Blake rage , the Republican convention has been using Black people to convince white people it ’ s OK to vote for a bigot .
The takeaway is painfully evident : They are tearing this country apart .
To wrap up this nightmarish week , we ’ re joined by The Nation ’ s national affairs correspondents , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jeet Heer ; our justice correspondent , Elie Mystal ; our columnist Katha Pollitt ; and our editor D.D .
Guttenplan .
Log on at 8:30 EDT tonight for commentary , quips , and analysis—and most of all , a sense of solidarity .
You ’ re not in the fight alone .

From the jump, the Republican National Convention, unsurprisingly, has been an unrelenting tsunami of hate, fearmongering, and, most of all, lies. The Republicans have doubled down on their fall 2020 campaign strategy: Go hard on the economy and try to trick voters into believing Trump has improved rather than destroyed it. Republicans completed the final step in the complete transfer of power over the Republican Party to Trump when the party decided not to adopt a new platform, making it ever more clear—seriously, how much more clear can it be?—that theirs is a party of extremists that elevates conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, anti-suffragists, and all-around monsters—and this is their convention. So it’s unsurprising that as protests responding to the police shooting of Jacob Blake rage, the Republican convention has been using Black people to convince white people it’s OK to vote for a bigot. The takeaway is painfully evident: They are tearing this country apart.
To wrap up this nightmarish week, we’re joined by The Nation’s national affairs correspondents, Joan Walsh, John Nichols, and Jeet Heer; our justice correspondent, Elie Mystal; our columnist Katha Pollitt; and our editor D.D. Guttenplan. Log on at 8:30 EDT tonight for commentary, quips, and analysis—and most of all, a sense of solidarity. You’re not in the fight alone.
—Anna Hiatt, executive digital editor


thenation--2020-08-27--We Need to Talk About the GOP’s ‘Black Friends’

In between the lies and the fearmongering and the stories about having intimate conversations with Jesus that somehow don ’ t include healing the sick or helping the needy , the goal of the 2020 Republican National Infomercial has been pretty obvious .
Republicans are doing everything they can to give white people “ permission ” to vote for a white nationalist bigot , Donald Trump .
Of course , most white Republican voters don ’ t need permission to vote for white supremacy .
They ’ re racist themselves and think being racist is just common sense .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ RNC featured Abby Johnson , an anti-abortion activist who , in a recent YouTube video , said it would be “ smart ” for cops to racially profile her brown son .
The RNC also featured Mark and Patricia McCloskey , the white couple from St. Louis who pointed weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters who were walking past their house .
The McCloskeys warned America about the danger to “ their ” communities from “ radical leftists , ” like soon-to-be Missouri Representative Cori Bush .
The message is not subtle , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say the quiet part out loud is why so many racists love him .
The irreducible core of his base is white people who think being openly racist and violent toward Black people is an inalienable right that has been taken from them by “ cancel culture.
” Trump gives these people a bullhorn , and they love him for it .
But there are other racist white people who miss their dog whistles .
There are white people who want every drop of privilege and power that flows from America ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t want that MAGA-hat-induced heat when they go to the grocery store .
They don ’ t think of themselves as “ racists ” —and get more offended when they ’ re called racist than they do over actual acts of racism .
They support the bigotry and xenophobia that Trump brings , but they don ’ t want to feel like bigots and xenophobes while supporting it .
These white people need some cover , and this year ’ s RNC is providing it in the form of Black people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invited a cadre of professional “ Black friends ” to validate Donald Trump and make white people feel a little less racist while supporting white supremacy .
There ’ s a word for what Republicans are doing—tokenism—and there are a lot of definitions of the term floating around .
So , at the risk of sounding as intellectually constrained as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch , I ’ ll use the dictionary definition of the term : tokenism | noun | the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce .
It is important to understand that tokenism is not done to benefit minorities , not even the token minorities used in the scheme .
Tokenism is done for the benefit of white people , to make them feel more comfortable and less complicit in the prejudice and bias of their institutions , schools , and workplaces .
It ’ s done to shield white endeavors from accusations of discrimination .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cosmetic adjustment : a mere lacquer of Black faces gilded onto the same old white spaces .
At the RNC , Republicans Go All-In on Police Impunity The DNC Refuses to Address the Elephant in the Room The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump ’ s Hands You can tell that the Republicans are engaging in tokenism at their convention if you listen to the content of the speeches given by Black speakers instead of being preoccupied ( as I suspect many Republicans are ) with the fact that they are talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and you will hear their silence on issues of racial and social justice .
The Black speakers , like the rest of the Republican Party , offer no agenda to extend economic or social opportunities to people of color .
They offer no policy prescriptions to address police brutality or violence against Black people .
They offer no rebuttals to the assaults on voting rights or immigrant rights the Trump administration engages in .
And they ’ ve been as silent about the disproportionate toll Covid-19 has taken on communities of color as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were allowed to speak at this convention were there to transmit one message to white listeners : “ It ’ s OK. ” Trump ’ s racism is OK , because here ’ s one of Trump ’ s Black golfing buddies .
Cops and vigilantes ’ shooting black people is OK , because here ’ s a Black ex-con who complied with the police and is still alive .
Caring only about your own pocketbook and 401 ( k ) is OK , because here ’ s a Black guy who started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of money .
All of them wanted to talk about their individual experiences with Trump .
None of them wanted to talk about systemic issues facing Black people who don ’ t have the benefit of knowing a Trump ( or a Kardashian ) personally .
Former NFL player and current insider-trading suspect Jack Brewer summed up the entire reason so many Black people were prominently featured at the RNC .
He told his audience , “ I know what racism looks like , I ’ ve seen it firsthand .
And America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump .
And I ’ m fed up with the way he ’ s portrayed in the media.
” Brewer gave voice to the way a lot of white people ( and some Black people ) view racism : a personal thought crime , not the commission of biased actions .
So when Brewer , or another former NFL star like Herschel Walker ( who on Tuesday said , “ I ’ ve seen racism up close , I know what it is , and it isn ’ t Donald Trump ” ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s supposed to make it OK to support Trump ’ s demonstrably racist actions , like birtherism , the Muslim ban , or sending in storm troopers to crush Black Lives Matters protesters .
The banality of these Black validators can be seen most clearly when you compare their roles to what the white speakers were allowed to do at the convention .
Think of it this way : Most of the white speakers came armed with some agenda .
They wanted more farm subsidies or fewer abortions or more Jesus in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people walking past their homes .
But the Black speakers seemingly wanted nothing .
There were no additional policies they desired or issues they wanted addressed .
They had no goals they wanted the next Trump administration to accomplish and no legislation they wanted Republicans to pass .
Republicans Have Organized a Backlash Convention , and It ’ s Tearing This Country Apart Instead of an agenda , the Black people were just there to say , “ Thank you , white folks , ” and fade off-screen .
Most of the Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a white man helped them in their life : Tim Scott , for instance , spoke about a Chick-fil-A man who helped him pass high school .
The ones who didn ’ t have nice white man to thank had to thank Trump directly .
Jon Ponder had both : He spoke about a white FBI agent who helped him turn his life around—and then , courtesy of a video recorded at the White House several hours earlier , the world got to see Trump give him a “ surprise ” pardon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ voice or role in shaping the agenda of an organization while dragging them out to thank white people for giving them an opportunity to be a part of the organization is what tokenism is all about .
There are legions of white people who only view Black people as criminals or charity cases and expect Black people to be appreciative and “ happy ” with what charity or clemency is given .
A Black person who demands equality makes those white people uncomfortable .
A Black person who demands equality now makes those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person who is “ just happy to be here ” is the only Black person those white people want to see .
That ’ s how the Republican National Convention brought itself to one of the lowest political stunts I think I ’ ve seen in my life , and I ’ m old enough to remember when George W. Bush flew in on a fighter jet and hung a “ Mission Accomplished ” banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln .
Trump held a naturalization ceremony for five variously brown people at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the convention .
These five people were reduced to smiling , nonspeaking props in Trump ’ s reelection campaign , at a ceremony that should have been all about them and their personal achievement of becoming American citizens .
At least two of the people didn ’ t know they would be filmed and used for a campaign stunt until they showed up at the ceremony .
Trump didn ’ t even bother to learn how to pronounce their names correctly .
After the ceremony , MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroft said , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if not hundreds of thousands , of people who are eligible and awaiting their own naturalization ceremonies .
And not only their own naturalization ceremonies , but the ability to vote this November.
” Tokenism doesn ’ t get more blatant than finding five new Americans to smile for you while you suppress the votes of thousands just like them .
The astute reader will notice that I haven ’ t been particularly critical of the Black and brown people who have allowed themselves to be used as tokens by the Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use me as a token before .
Don ’ t let these Black Republicans fool you : We know it when it ’ s happening .
We notice when people don ’ t give a damn about us until it ’ s school picture day .
All tokens have a choice to smile for white people in exchange for the opportunities and prestige they can provide or to tell white people the truth and risk retribution and being kicked out of the club .
I try not to begrudge Black people who consent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shameful , but Black people like money , too .
Getting to the point where you can consistently tell white people where they can stick it , and live to tell the tale , is itself a form of privilege .
This week , I ’ ve found myself regarding the Black bodies dancing for Trump with as much pity as disgust .
What anger I have for this particular crop of Black tokens comes from the fact that so many of them volunteered .
These were not schoolboys trying to get by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to hang onto their jobs .
These were grown-ass adults , predominantly men , who could have sat this grift out but raised their hands to confirm white bias and quote scripture while doing it .
We know Trump doesn ’ t like to pay his debts , so I hope they got their 30 pieces of silver up front .
The RNC ’ s Pitch to Black America Is Not Just Ridiculous—It ’ s Sick Still , the willingness of a person to debase themselves does not absolve those who profit from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suffering from an economic collapse that disproportionately affects our communities , a pandemic that disproportionately afflicts our communities , and a criminal justice system that disproportionately murders people in our communities .
And all the Republican Party has to offer in response is a few performative pardons and some Magic Negroes who are willing to help white people feel cool with bigotry .
Moral judgment should fall on those who use tokenism to hide their racism .
The few Black people who are willing to play along in exchange for cash or prizes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sure this week ’ s show will help Trump with his base .
White Republicans have enjoyed a week of listening to Black people tell them exactly what they want to hear .
At least they got actual Black people to participate in the performance instead of locking the Trump children in a room with a vat of shoe polish until Eric took one for the team .

This article appears in the September 21/28, 2020 issue.
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In between the lies and the fearmongering and the stories about having intimate conversations with Jesus that somehow don’t include healing the sick or helping the needy, the goal of the 2020 Republican National Infomercial has been pretty obvious. Republicans are doing everything they can to give white people “permission” to vote for a white nationalist bigot, Donald Trump.
Of course, most white Republican voters don’t need permission to vote for white supremacy. They’re racist themselves and think being racist is just common sense. This convention has plenty for them. The RNC featured Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist who, in a recent YouTube video, said it would be “smart” for cops to racially profile her brown son. The RNC also featured Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white couple from St. Louis who pointed weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters who were walking past their house. The McCloskeys warned America about the danger to “their” communities from “radical leftists,” like soon-to-be Missouri Representative Cori Bush.
The message is not subtle, but Donald Trump’s willingness to say the quiet part out loud is why so many racists love him. The irreducible core of his base is white people who think being openly racist and violent toward Black people is an inalienable right that has been taken from them by “cancel culture.” Trump gives these people a bullhorn, and they love him for it.
But there are other racist white people who miss their dog whistles. There are white people who want every drop of privilege and power that flows from America’s systemic oppression of Black people, but don’t want that MAGA-hat-induced heat when they go to the grocery store. They don’t think of themselves as “racists”—and get more offended when they’re called racist than they do over actual acts of racism. They support the bigotry and xenophobia that Trump brings, but they don’t want to feel like bigots and xenophobes while supporting it.
These white people need some cover, and this year’s RNC is providing it in the form of Black people who support Trump. The Republicans have invited a cadre of professional “Black friends” to validate Donald Trump and make white people feel a little less racist while supporting white supremacy.
There’s a word for what Republicans are doing—tokenism—and there are a lot of definitions of the term floating around. So, at the risk of sounding as intellectually constrained as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, I’ll use the dictionary definition of the term:
tokenism | noun | the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
It is important to understand that tokenism is not done to benefit minorities, not even the token minorities used in the scheme. Tokenism is done for the benefit of white people, to make them feel more comfortable and less complicit in the prejudice and bias of their institutions, schools, and workplaces. It’s done to shield white endeavors from accusations of discrimination. It is, quite literally, a cosmetic adjustment: a mere lacquer of Black faces gilded onto the same old white spaces. More from Mystal At the RNC, Republicans Go All In on Police Impunity Elie Mystal The DNC Refuses to Address the Elephant in the Room Elie Mystal The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump’s Hands Elie Mystal
You can tell that the Republicans are engaging in tokenism at their convention if you listen to the content of the speeches given by Black speakers instead of being preoccupied (as I suspect many Republicans are) with the fact that they are talking while Black. Close your eyes, and you will hear their silence on issues of racial and social justice. The Black speakers, like the rest of the Republican Party, offer no agenda to extend economic or social opportunities to people of color. They offer no policy prescriptions to address police brutality or violence against Black people. They offer no rebuttals to the assaults on voting rights or immigrant rights the Trump administration engages in. And they’ve been as silent about the disproportionate toll Covid-19 has taken on communities of color as Herman Cain.
The Black people who were allowed to speak at this convention were there to transmit one message to white listeners: “It’s OK.” Trump’s racism is OK, because here’s one of Trump’s Black golfing buddies. Cops and vigilantes’ shooting black people is OK, because here’s a Black ex-con who complied with the police and is still alive. Caring only about your own pocketbook and 401(k) is OK, because here’s a Black guy who started his own business and made a lot of money. All of them wanted to talk about their individual experiences with Trump. None of them wanted to talk about systemic issues facing Black people who don’t have the benefit of knowing a Trump (or a Kardashian) personally.
Former NFL player and current insider-trading suspect Jack Brewer summed up the entire reason so many Black people were prominently featured at the RNC. He told his audience, “I know what racism looks like, I’ve seen it firsthand. And America, it has no resemblance to President Trump. And I’m fed up with the way he’s portrayed in the media.” Brewer gave voice to the way a lot of white people (and some Black people) view racism: a personal thought crime, not the commission of biased actions. So when Brewer, or another former NFL star like Herschel Walker (who on Tuesday said, “I’ve seen racism up close, I know what it is, and it isn’t Donald Trump”), vouches for Trump personally, it’s supposed to make it OK to support Trump’s demonstrably racist actions, like birtherism, the Muslim ban, or sending in storm troopers to crush Black Lives Matters protesters.
The banality of these Black validators can be seen most clearly when you compare their roles to what the white speakers were allowed to do at the convention. Think of it this way: Most of the white speakers came armed with some agenda. They wanted more farm subsidies or fewer abortions or more Jesus in schools or the right to shoot Black people walking past their homes. But the Black speakers seemingly wanted nothing. There were no additional policies they desired or issues they wanted addressed. They had no goals they wanted the next Trump administration to accomplish and no legislation they wanted Republicans to pass. Backlash Convention Republicans Have Organized a Backlash Convention, and It’s Tearing This Country Apart John Nichols
Instead of an agenda, the Black people were just there to say, “Thank you, white folks,” and fade off-screen. Most of the Black speakers had a specific story about how a white man helped them in their life: Tim Scott, for instance, spoke about a Chick-fil-A man who helped him pass high school. The ones who didn’t have nice white man to thank had to thank Trump directly. Jon Ponder had both: He spoke about a white FBI agent who helped him turn his life around—and then, courtesy of a video recorded at the White House several hours earlier, the world got to see Trump give him a “surprise” pardon.
Making sure that Black people have no voice or role in shaping the agenda of an organization while dragging them out to thank white people for giving them an opportunity to be a part of the organization is what tokenism is all about. There are legions of white people who only view Black people as criminals or charity cases and expect Black people to be appreciative and “happy” with what charity or clemency is given. A Black person who demands equality makes those white people uncomfortable. A Black person who demands equality now makes those white people feel threatened. A Black person who is “just happy to be here” is the only Black person those white people want to see.
That’s how the Republican National Convention brought itself to one of the lowest political stunts I think I’ve seen in my life, and I’m old enough to remember when George W. Bush flew in on a fighter jet and hung a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Trump held a naturalization ceremony for five variously brown people at the White House and broadcast the proceedings to the convention. These five people were reduced to smiling, nonspeaking props in Trump’s reelection campaign, at a ceremony that should have been all about them and their personal achievement of becoming American citizens. At least two of the people didn’t know they would be filmed and used for a campaign stunt until they showed up at the ceremony. Current Issue View our current issue
Trump didn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce their names correctly.
After the ceremony, MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroft said, “There are literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who are eligible and awaiting their own naturalization ceremonies. And not only their own naturalization ceremonies, but the ability to vote this November.” Tokenism doesn’t get more blatant than finding five new Americans to smile for you while you suppress the votes of thousands just like them.
The astute reader will notice that I haven’t been particularly critical of the Black and brown people who have allowed themselves to be used as tokens by the Trump administration this week. People have tried to use me as a token before. Don’t let these Black Republicans fool you: We know it when it’s happening. We notice when people don’t give a damn about us until it’s school picture day. All tokens have a choice to smile for white people in exchange for the opportunities and prestige they can provide or to tell white people the truth and risk retribution and being kicked out of the club. I try not to begrudge Black people who consent to be used: It’s shameful, but Black people like money, too. Getting to the point where you can consistently tell white people where they can stick it, and live to tell the tale, is itself a form of privilege. This week, I’ve found myself regarding the Black bodies dancing for Trump with as much pity as disgust.
What anger I have for this particular crop of Black tokens comes from the fact that so many of them volunteered. These were not schoolboys trying to get by at prep school or single moms trying to hang onto their jobs. These were grown-ass adults, predominantly men, who could have sat this grift out but raised their hands to confirm white bias and quote scripture while doing it. We know Trump doesn’t like to pay his debts, so I hope they got their 30 pieces of silver up front. Sickening The RNC’s Pitch to Black America Is Not Just Ridiculous—It’s Sick Jeet Heer
Still, the willingness of a person to debase themselves does not absolve those who profit from the debasement. People of color are suffering from an economic collapse that disproportionately affects our communities, a pandemic that disproportionately afflicts our communities, and a criminal justice system that disproportionately murders people in our communities. And all the Republican Party has to offer in response is a few performative pardons and some Magic Negroes who are willing to help white people feel cool with bigotry. Moral judgment should fall on those who use tokenism to hide their racism. The few Black people who are willing to play along in exchange for cash or prizes are largely irrelevant.
I’m sure this week’s show will help Trump with his base. White Republicans have enjoyed a week of listening to Black people tell them exactly what they want to hear.
At least they got actual Black people to participate in the performance instead of locking the Trump children in a room with a vat of shoe polish until Eric took one for the team.


thenation--2020-08-27--What We Talk About When We Talk About Catastrophe

“ What in the world are we supposed to care about , ” Elisa Gabbert demands near the end of her new book , The Unreality of Memory , “ and how much ?
” In the moment , her question registers as both anticipatory and empathetic , a commiserating acknowledgement of the gnarled , unsolvable dilemmas hovering in her book ’ s atmosphere .
Who could write about the catastrophes addling this world without , just briefly , burying her head in her hands ?
The Unreality of Memory : And Other Essays Gabbert ’ s nimble essay collection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neither does it distend into vague optimism .
As a philosopher of disaster—imminent , recurring , and far-flung—Gabbert knows there ’ s no time to waste .
Her source material is grim , a compendium of haunting threats that could fuel late-night obsession , but in the best of circumstances will nudge the political reckoning that ’ s already upon us .
Some essays take as their focus protracted , insidious calamities like plagues and climate change ( although , as Gabbert notes , the latter is a defanged term ; “ global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Others consider historical horrors like the sinking of the Titanic and 9/11 .
Still others examine the moral emergency begot by the 2016 presidential election , its fallout infinitely reiterated by the headlines that shriek from our Twitter feeds .
But as the book ’ s title implies , The Unreality of Memory is less a meditation on catastrophe than it is an inquiry into the variously stymied and misshapen ways humans discern them .
Similarly thwarted is our struggle to locate ourselves amid these disasters .
Gabbert studies our atomized and vulnerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Her essays , vigorous in their intellectual pursuit , travel across vast and varied territory—the conundrum of self-recognition ( “ Vanity Project ” ) , the emotion of pain ( “ Witches and Whiplash ” ) , compassion fatigue ( “ I ’ m So Tired ” ) —but never at the expense of thematic cohesion .
Cumulatively , this work lays bare the intractable chasm between what we fear and what we understand .
How we look at disasters and how we commit them to memory reveal our fettered perception , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ edges of our empathy .
If Gabbert enacts and even , at times , communes with us in vexation—What in the world are we supposed to care about ?
—she does not absolve us of our ethical responsibilities .
On the contrary , by confronting our most self-preserving and insulating inclinations , The Unreality of Memory illuminates what we must work against .
Gabbert wonders , even doubts , whether humans can reroute our baffled , wayward course ; she knows that we must try , anyway .
Overwhelmed by the effects of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the alienated experience of lockdown , many of us have begun conceiving of these conditions in terms of narrative .
This method of coming to terms feels expected , even fair .
As Gabbert ’ s book emphasizes , we are creatures who long for a plot ’ s sturdy scaffolding , and the helter-skelter extremities of 2020 upset this inclination .
Some , seeking comfort in the macabre , imagine our frenetic present as a dystopian novel , crowded with emergencies .
On May 9 , the author Emily St. John Mandel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tension here , but I wonder if we need the polar vortex that freezes all the marigolds on day 59 of quarantine ?
” Jokes like this make for comforting disengagement , and treating this ruinous year as a punch line allows us to take a quick , salvaging breath .
But the premise of St. John Mandel ’ s tweet also gestures to a problem of psychological logistics , one that Gabbert explores : Eventually we reach a saturation point .
“ Worry , like attention , is a limited resource , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Threats ” — “ we can ’ t worry about everything at once.
” These impasses preoccupy Gabbert .
As she insists , our inability to fathom every extant crisis does not render them less urgent .
By elevating the proximate concerns that impact our quotidian survival , “ like losing our jobs or our healthcare , ” we establish a fictional hierarchy , thrusting “ nebulous threats ” like global warming into a murky and neglected background .
Two months after laughing at St. John Mandel ’ s tweet , I realized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essay , that I had entirely forgotten about that polar vortex .
I was aware of it in early May , of course , because it was something somatic , tangible .
But swiftly enough , the temperature climbed to more predictable heights , and this brief , peculiar episode skimmed off my brain , like foam .
Frozen marigolds in May make for a melancholy , quietly poignant image—they beckon , after all , to a global environmental crisis—but unseasonably cold spates do not yield sensational tidings .
Pointing to the work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writes that “ the media and memory are both highly visual .
Spectacular disasters like earthquakes , hurricanes , and floods are newsworthy , but climate change is not .
You can package the symptoms , but not the disease.
” We are inclined , it seems , to devote our skittish attention to problems when they make us feel like protagonists at the center of the story , and when the objective—staying alive—is eminently legible .
After all , we scout out legibility , in our lives and in our mirrors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pleasant shape .
In “ Vanity Project , ” Gabbert remarks upon the human tendency to look automatically at the left side of the face—for most of us , our “ good ” side , or rather the one “ routinely judged to be more attractive ” when “ photographs of faces [ are ] manipulated to be left-symmetrical ( so that both sides are the left side ) .
” Perhaps , as research posits , we are so inclined because the left side of the face registers emotion more intensely than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is not merely emotion that we discern but our selfhood .
It is eerie how , unbidden , our minds seek and cultivate the most palatable version of consciousness .
If Gabbert is tracing her finger along the contours of human failures , she reminds us that our essential limitations may matter just as much as our hubris and folly .
Moreover , by casting perception as a sort of vanity project , she signals the centrality of aesthetics to our attentional and emotional investment .
“ Our cultural calculus on what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ include how much publicity they get , ” she writes—and what is publicity , if not a compelling appeal to our senses ?
In Gabbert ’ s estimation , no accident claims as much capital in Western cultural memory as the 1986 nuclear explosion at Chernobyl : So vivid are its reverberations that it recently inspired an HBO miniseries .
Maybe our fascination with it and with other famous calamities indicates a template for what our eyes require in order to maintain their grip .
Per Gabbert , Moeller and the scholar Rob @ @ @ @ @ @ @ react to or prepare for less visible disasters ” is contingent upon the stories we are told about them , and that often we aren ’ t being sufficiently captivated .
We require , then , “ a shift in aesthetics.
” Gabbert revisits this term in her essay “ I ’ m So Tired , ” as she parses how media coverage both anticipates and nurtures this fickle ebb and flow of an audience ’ s compassion .
She explains , “ When a story ’ s not hot anymore…the media drops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words , crises often get boring before they get better.
” The essay coaxes readers toward a notion both queasy and potent , particularly when it pertains to another ’ s ill fortune : Our horror and our empathy are tangled inextricably with our sense of entertainment .
Gabbert does not treat this as a moral failing , but in relying on shock and pleasure to motivate our good works , she wonders what we ’ ve ignored or impulsively overlooked .
The brunt of “ I ’ m So Tired ” draws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” a form of emotional burnout that develops in response to prolonged and devoted care work .
( As you might imagine , health care professionals are especially susceptible . )
In her study of empathy and its impediments , Gabbert draws on Susan Sontag ’ s Regarding the Pain of Others and its invocation of the same term .
“ Flooded with images of the sort that once used to shock and arouse indignation , ” Sontag writes , “ we are losing our capacity to react .
Compassion , stretched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So runs the familiar diagnosis.
” A familiar diagnosis and an agitating one : It is morally disturbing to confront apathy as an automatic emotional safeguard .
Gabbert , however , pokes at the underlying assumption—that empathy is an end unto itself .
“ What good is compassion if it doesn ’ t translate into concrete , external action ?
” she asks .
“ It ’ s rational to cut off the supply of emotion if it amounts to wasted energy.
” I understand Gabbert ’ s provocation , and yet—here—I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every opportunity for material action , nor can we know precisely the lengths that our efforts will travel .
When we prophesize our inefficacy we are more likely to beget it , as we yield to self-preservation .
There is no potential without the preexisting energy of care , and so care we must—rigorously , recklessly .
My initial reaction , upon reading The Unreality of Memory , was to marvel at its prescience .
From where I sat—isolated in lockdown , panicking over alarming headlines—a book studying the overlap of disaster and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gabbert even quotes Anthony Fauci . )
But this response betrays the circumscribed contours of my attention : Perhaps I would not be so astonished if I were not engrossed in my own skimpy , generally pleasant experience of the world .
And yet Gabbert suggests that surprise in the wake of disaster might be inevitable , for “ disasters always feel like a thing of the past.
” This impulse to convince ourselves that we ’ ve moved beyond each atrocity is certainly soothing .
For , in an evolutionary paradigm , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ architecture of our salvation .
We can ’ t lean on this kind of thinking , but we also can not expect the “ unknown unknown.
” “ We do learn from the past , ” Gabbert explains , “ but we can ’ t learn from disasters we can ’ t even conceive of.
” The work resides in extending ourselves to determine what , exactly , is conceivable and what we choose not to prevent .
In the thick of a pandemic and an uprising against police and state violence—two forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this swath of time will look in hindsight .
At the start of lockdown , many of us compulsively dubbed our circumstances “ unprecedented , ” and for those of us who have always enjoyed the comforts of health and safety , they probably are .
Then , when “ unprecedented ” became a rhetorical tic , we took gasps of refuge in ironic detachment .
“ In These Uncertain Times ” began to surface across social media platforms as a tart refrain , mocking the perfunctory , hollow gestures of corporations with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The trend seems to motion , elliptically , to one ’ s recognition of privilege : I can not take my anxieties seriously because I am not in actual distress .
It also feels adjacent to what Gabbert calls “ the performative death wish , ” in which we treat an “ extinction-level event ” as welcome annihilation .
These are uniquely funereal hyperboles , and as Gabbert remarks , they might communicate a desire to suffer— “ liberal guilt run amok , transformed into a longing for punishment.
” Of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bearable , especially when the source of those worries eludes full human comprehension .
But taken together , these tendencies indicate an existential tussle : Acknowledging suffering ’ s unfamiliarity throws into relief how accustomed we are to ease and comfort .
Perhaps , as Gabbert proposes , we overcompensate , either by diminishing our pain or by telling ourselves we deserve it .
And yet lately I don ’ t see acidic evocations of “ Uncertain Times ” or flamboyant pleas to end it all .
We ’ ve realized , perhaps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for lingering in ennui .
Instead , my social media networks heave with infographics for scheduled anti-racist protests , mutual aid efforts , and best safety practices .
Sometimes this feels like a frenzied surfeit of information , but I think it should—we should not be at ease right now .
Above all , this proliferation indicates a heartening , rousing turn to civic engagement .
We are , in real time , grappling with Gabbert ’ s question : What in the world are we supposed to care about ?
Earnest intentions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not save us , but we will surely founder without them .
If compassion “ is a matter of aesthetics , ” as Gabbert suggests , so too , then , is our ability to maintain it .
In “ I ’ m So Tired , ” she recounts an agitating scene in Luis Buñuel ’ s 1929 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou , in which the director ’ s clever editing creates the impression of a man lacerating a woman ’ s eye with a razor .
“ I cringe and look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagine it happening to me , ” she writes .
“ In some sense , having empathy is a way of feeling compassion for myself.
” It ’ s a natural response , and it ’ s a symptom of our fundamental , feral , and seemingly implacable priority : our own bodies , our own assured survival .
We turn our heads again and again to what we recognize , to what we prefer to see .
Of course , as The Unreality of Memory forewarns , there is no assured survival @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mystified—if only we cared about ourselves a little less .

“What in the world are we supposed to care about,” Elisa Gabbert demands near the end of her new book, The Unreality of Memory, “and how much?” In the moment, her question registers as both anticipatory and empathetic, a commiserating acknowledgement of the gnarled, unsolvable dilemmas hovering in her book’s atmosphere. Who could write about the catastrophes addling this world without, just briefly, burying her head in her hands? Books in Review The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays By Elisa Gabbert Buy this book
Gabbert’s nimble essay collection does not tarry in despair, but neither does it distend into vague optimism. As a philosopher of disaster—imminent, recurring, and far-flung—Gabbert knows there’s no time to waste. Her source material is grim, a compendium of haunting threats that could fuel late-night obsession, but in the best of circumstances will nudge the political reckoning that’s already upon us. Some essays take as their focus protracted, insidious calamities like plagues and climate change (although, as Gabbert notes, the latter is a defanged term; “global warming” is more accurate). Others consider historical horrors like the sinking of the Titanic and 9/11. Still others examine the moral emergency begot by the 2016 presidential election, its fallout infinitely reiterated by the headlines that shriek from our Twitter feeds.
But as the book’s title implies, The Unreality of Memory is less a meditation on catastrophe than it is an inquiry into the variously stymied and misshapen ways humans discern them. Similarly thwarted is our struggle to locate ourselves amid these disasters. Gabbert studies our atomized and vulnerable capacity for perception with whetted eloquence: Her essays, vigorous in their intellectual pursuit, travel across vast and varied territory—the conundrum of self-recognition (“Vanity Project”), the emotion of pain (“Witches and Whiplash”), compassion fatigue (“I’m So Tired”)—but never at the expense of thematic cohesion. Cumulatively, this work lays bare the intractable chasm between what we fear and what we understand. How we look at disasters and how we commit them to memory reveal our fettered perception, and by extension, the fickle, mutable edges of our empathy.
If Gabbert enacts and even, at times, communes with us in vexation—What in the world are we supposed to care about?—she does not absolve us of our ethical responsibilities. On the contrary, by confronting our most self-preserving and insulating inclinations, The Unreality of Memory illuminates what we must work against. Gabbert wonders, even doubts, whether humans can reroute our baffled, wayward course; she knows that we must try, anyway.
Overwhelmed by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, not to mention the alienated experience of lockdown, many of us have begun conceiving of these conditions in terms of narrative. This method of coming to terms feels expected, even fair. As Gabbert’s book emphasizes, we are creatures who long for a plot’s sturdy scaffolding, and the helter-skelter extremities of 2020 upset this inclination. Some, seeking comfort in the macabre, imagine our frenetic present as a dystopian novel, crowded with emergencies. On May 9, the author Emily St. John Mandel tweeted, “‘Lots of great tension here, but I wonder if we need the polar vortex that freezes all the marigolds on day 59 of quarantine?” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Jokes like this make for comforting disengagement, and treating this ruinous year as a punch line allows us to take a quick, salvaging breath. But the premise of St. John Mandel’s tweet also gestures to a problem of psychological logistics, one that Gabbert explores: Eventually we reach a saturation point. “Worry, like attention, is a limited resource,” she writes in her essay “Threats”—“we can’t worry about everything at once.” These impasses preoccupy Gabbert. As she insists, our inability to fathom every extant crisis does not render them less urgent. By elevating the proximate concerns that impact our quotidian survival, “like losing our jobs or our healthcare,” we establish a fictional hierarchy, thrusting “nebulous threats” like global warming into a murky and neglected background.
Two months after laughing at St. John Mandel’s tweet, I realized, in the process of writing this essay, that I had entirely forgotten about that polar vortex. I was aware of it in early May, of course, because it was something somatic, tangible. But swiftly enough, the temperature climbed to more predictable heights, and this brief, peculiar episode skimmed off my brain, like foam. Frozen marigolds in May make for a melancholy, quietly poignant image—they beckon, after all, to a global environmental crisis—but unseasonably cold spates do not yield sensational tidings. Pointing to the work of journalist Susan D. Moeller, Gabbert writes that “the media and memory are both highly visual. Spectacular disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods are newsworthy, but climate change is not. You can package the symptoms, but not the disease.” We are inclined, it seems, to devote our skittish attention to problems when they make us feel like protagonists at the center of the story, and when the objective—staying alive—is eminently legible.
After all, we scout out legibility, in our lives and in our mirrors, and we prefer when it takes a pleasant shape. In “Vanity Project,” Gabbert remarks upon the human tendency to look automatically at the left side of the face—for most of us, our “good” side, or rather the one “routinely judged to be more attractive” when “photographs of faces [are] manipulated to be left-symmetrical (so that both sides are the left side).” Perhaps, as research posits, we are so inclined because the left side of the face registers emotion more intensely than the right—or perhaps, Gabbert suggests, it is not merely emotion that we discern but our selfhood. It is eerie how, unbidden, our minds seek and cultivate the most palatable version of consciousness. If Gabbert is tracing her finger along the contours of human failures, she reminds us that our essential limitations may matter just as much as our hubris and folly.
Moreover, by casting perception as a sort of vanity project, she signals the centrality of aesthetics to our attentional and emotional investment. “Our cultural calculus on what constitutes the ‘worst’ disasters must include how much publicity they get,” she writes—and what is publicity, if not a compelling appeal to our senses? In Gabbert’s estimation, no accident claims as much capital in Western cultural memory as the 1986 nuclear explosion at Chernobyl: So vivid are its reverberations that it recently inspired an HBO miniseries. Maybe our fascination with it and with other famous calamities indicates a template for what our eyes require in order to maintain their grip. Per Gabbert, Moeller and the scholar Rob Nixon believe that our ability to “react to or prepare for less visible disasters” is contingent upon the stories we are told about them, and that often we aren’t being sufficiently captivated. We require, then, “a shift in aesthetics.”
Gabbert revisits this term in her essay “I’m So Tired,” as she parses how media coverage both anticipates and nurtures this fickle ebb and flow of an audience’s compassion. She explains, “When a story’s not hot anymore…the media drops [it]…. In other words, crises often get boring before they get better.” The essay coaxes readers toward a notion both queasy and potent, particularly when it pertains to another’s ill fortune: Our horror and our empathy are tangled inextricably with our sense of entertainment. Gabbert does not treat this as a moral failing, but in relying on shock and pleasure to motivate our good works, she wonders what we’ve ignored or impulsively overlooked.
The brunt of “I’m So Tired” draws on the concept of “compassion fatigue,” a form of emotional burnout that develops in response to prolonged and devoted care work. (As you might imagine, health care professionals are especially susceptible.) In her study of empathy and its impediments, Gabbert draws on Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and its invocation of the same term. “Flooded with images of the sort that once used to shock and arouse indignation,” Sontag writes, “we are losing our capacity to react. Compassion, stretched to its limits, is going numb. So runs the familiar diagnosis.”
A familiar diagnosis and an agitating one: It is morally disturbing to confront apathy as an automatic emotional safeguard. Gabbert, however, pokes at the underlying assumption—that empathy is an end unto itself. “What good is compassion if it doesn’t translate into concrete, external action?” she asks. “It’s rational to cut off the supply of emotion if it amounts to wasted energy.” I understand Gabbert’s provocation, and yet—here—I resist it. We cannot presuppose every opportunity for material action, nor can we know precisely the lengths that our efforts will travel. When we prophesize our inefficacy we are more likely to beget it, as we yield to self-preservation. There is no potential without the preexisting energy of care, and so care we must—rigorously, recklessly.
My initial reaction, upon reading The Unreality of Memory, was to marvel at its prescience. From where I sat—isolated in lockdown, panicking over alarming headlines—a book studying the overlap of disaster and human frailty seemed singularly topical. (Gabbert even quotes Anthony Fauci.) But this response betrays the circumscribed contours of my attention: Perhaps I would not be so astonished if I were not engrossed in my own skimpy, generally pleasant experience of the world. And yet Gabbert suggests that surprise in the wake of disaster might be inevitable, for “disasters always feel like a thing of the past.”
This impulse to convince ourselves that we’ve moved beyond each atrocity is certainly soothing. For, in an evolutionary paradigm, tragedies become instructive sacrifices ultimately bracing the architecture of our salvation. We can’t lean on this kind of thinking, but we also cannot expect the “unknown unknown.” “We do learn from the past,” Gabbert explains, “but we can’t learn from disasters we can’t even conceive of.” The work resides in extending ourselves to determine what, exactly, is conceivable and what we choose not to prevent.
In the thick of a pandemic and an uprising against police and state violence—two forces, enmeshed—we can’t know how this swath of time will look in hindsight. At the start of lockdown, many of us compulsively dubbed our circumstances “unprecedented,” and for those of us who have always enjoyed the comforts of health and safety, they probably are. Then, when “unprecedented” became a rhetorical tic, we took gasps of refuge in ironic detachment. “In These Uncertain Times” began to surface across social media platforms as a tart refrain, mocking the perfunctory, hollow gestures of corporations with the faux-pomp bestowed by caps lock.
The trend seems to motion, elliptically, to one’s recognition of privilege: I cannot take my anxieties seriously because I am not in actual distress. It also feels adjacent to what Gabbert calls “the performative death wish,” in which we treat an “extinction-level event” as welcome annihilation. These are uniquely funereal hyperboles, and as Gabbert remarks, they might communicate a desire to suffer—“liberal guilt run amok, transformed into a longing for punishment.” Of course, morbid cynicism probably makes our worries more bearable, especially when the source of those worries eludes full human comprehension. But taken together, these tendencies indicate an existential tussle: Acknowledging suffering’s unfamiliarity throws into relief how accustomed we are to ease and comfort. Perhaps, as Gabbert proposes, we overcompensate, either by diminishing our pain or by telling ourselves we deserve it.
And yet lately I don’t see acidic evocations of “Uncertain Times” or flamboyant pleas to end it all. We’ve realized, perhaps, that there’s no time for lingering in ennui. Instead, my social media networks heave with infographics for scheduled anti-racist protests, mutual aid efforts, and best safety practices. Sometimes this feels like a frenzied surfeit of information, but I think it should—we should not be at ease right now. Above all, this proliferation indicates a heartening, rousing turn to civic engagement. We are, in real time, grappling with Gabbert’s question: What in the world are we supposed to care about? Earnest intentions, care, and empathy alone cannot save us, but we will surely founder without them.
If compassion “is a matter of aesthetics,” as Gabbert suggests, so too, then, is our ability to maintain it. In “I’m So Tired,” she recounts an agitating scene in Luis Buñuel’s 1929 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, in which the director’s clever editing creates the impression of a man lacerating a woman’s eye with a razor. “I cringe and look away because on some automatic level I imagine it happening to me,” she writes. “In some sense, having empathy is a way of feeling compassion for myself.” It’s a natural response, and it’s a symptom of our fundamental, feral, and seemingly implacable priority: our own bodies, our own assured survival. We turn our heads again and again to what we recognize, to what we prefer to see. Of course, as The Unreality of Memory forewarns, there is no assured survival. But perhaps it would be graspable—less mystified—if only we cared about ourselves a little less.