War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity and the Crises at our Fingertips<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis shaping is a complex process, underpinned by layers of civilian and military cyber and digital infrastructure that populate our entire environment. Smartphones, with their ever-developing communication, sensor and app functions, are embedded within this infrastructure. They have also been co-opted for security, surveillance and targeting purposes by state and non-state actors, becoming, according to Ford, an \u2018integral part of the kill chain\u2019.<\/p>\n
Ford argues that, as an operative device, the smartphone is now \u2018being used as a central weapon of war\u2019. He points to the use of smartphones to record, collect and globally broadcast images and details of war. Such representations, constantly disseminated at signal speed, take war beyond geographic battlefields into virtual worlds, where they can be tactically used for activities such as information warfare.<\/p>\n
The book amplifies the warning of Australia\u2019s director-general of security, Mike Burgess, that \u2018a hyper-connected world will allow political tensions or conflicts overseas to resonate quickly in Australia, spread by social media and online echo chambers, inflamed by mis- or disinformation\u2019. Ford\u2019s spotlight on how rapid delivery and social media saturation of representations of war influence global political and public perceptions of war is indeed timely, and urgent.<\/p>\n
War in the Smartphone Age benefits from Ford\u2019s technical and technological enquiry, his military history and his media studies research. This includes close analyses of contemporary lethal strategies and technologies used in wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. He acknowledges the physical dangers of war on the ground, also emphasising that latent lethality is harboured by globally \u2018meshed\u2019 military and civilian technologies. This raises ethical and legal concerns, including civilian status and civilian safeguards, and a tension between corporate or government control of and responsibility for software, platforms and networks. Additionally, investigation of open-source intelligence activities reveals further complexities of war in a hyperconnected world.<\/p>\n
Ford\u2019s research intersects with issues that are pertinent for Australian defence, military and security players. One of these issues relates to the concept of acceleration. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) addressed concerns that the Australian Defence Force was \u2018not fully fit for purpose\u2019 with aspirations for an \u2018accelerated preparedness\u2019 policy. Although preparedness is mentioned in the 2024 National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program, the urgency of the DSR had dissipated by 2024. The chapter, \u2018Accelerated War\u2019, provides clues that could explain why.<\/p>\n
The DSR noted that Australia required accelerated preparedness because warning time or geography can no longer be relied upon. However, this was not matched with big-picture re-conceptions of the kind (or kinds) of war that must be prepared for. Ford\u2019s description of accelerated war\u2014\u2018where the time between identifying and hitting a target is defined by the speed of data\u2019\u2014stimulates big picture and alternative ideas. By positioning data, signal speed and reduced time as related characters, he identifies key drivers of contemporary and future war. He asks two questions that help us to think about the implications of these factors on preparedness: \u2018is it possible to accelerate war to the speed of data and what does this tell us about the new face of battle?\u2019<\/p>\n
An observation that \u2018the systems enabling accelerated warfare are globally distributed and owned by private entities that may or may not choose to cooperate with the state\u2019 has implications for whole-of-government and whole-of nation defence strategies. These implications include how civilian technologies may adversely affect or positively contribute to security capabilities, defence capabilities and sovereign resilience.<\/p>\n
A chapter on \u2018Participative Warfare\u2019 addresses the issue of civilian involvement in war and preparedness. Using multiple examples of civilian participation in the war in Ukraine, particularly using smartphones, the author demonstrates that nations need to pay attention to what \u2018whole-of\u2019 strategies practically mean, especially for civilians.<\/p>\n
In a rapidly changing world, the book informs while provoking more questions. Written for a broad public, military and academic audience, War in the Smartphone Age is a timely catalyst for brave and creative thinking about war, peace and the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The smartphone is helping to shape the conduct and representation of contemporary war, argues Matthew Ford in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-80050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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