Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: ray kurzweil, robot ethics, unmanned wars, United States, World War, Star Trek (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brookings Institute fellow Singer (Children at War) believes that we resist trying to research and understand change in the making of war. Robotics promises to be the most comprehensive instrument of change in war since the introduction of gunpowder. Beginning with a brief and useful survey of robotics, Singer discusses its military applications during WWII, the arming and autonomy of robots at the turn of the century, and the broad influence of robotics on near-future battlefields. How, for example, can rules of engagement for unmanned autonomous machines be created and enforced? Can an artificial intelligence commit a war crime? Arguably more significant is Singers provocative case that war itself will be redefined as technology creates increasing physical and emotional distance from combat. As robotics diminishes wars risks the technology diminishes as well the higher purposes traditionally used to justify it. Might that reduce humanitys propensity for war making? Or will robotics make war less humane by making it less human? Singer has more questions than answers—but it is difficult to challenge his concluding admonition to question and study the technologies of military robotics—while the chance remains. (Jan. 26)
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Review

“PW Singer. . .has written what is likely to be the definitive work on this subject for some time to come. He has a record of drawing out the underlying trends in modern warfare, with previous books on child soldiers and the increasing use of mercenaries. Wired for War will confirm his reputation: it is riveting and comprehensive, encompassing every aspect of the rise of military robotics, from the historical to the ethical.”
— Financial Times

“A riveting, important book . . . Singer, at age 29 the youngest scholar named a senior fellow to the Brookings Institute, put four years into writing Wired for War. It is the only book in my reading experience that quotes Immanuel Kant and Biggie Smalls with equal enthusiasm. The resulting book is an intoxicating, encyclopedic trip - made intensely readable by all the colorful characters Singer salts along this story. . . . I will be shelving my copy next to two other books that remade my world view: Tracy Kidder's The Soul of the New Machine and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.”
— Karen Long, book editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

“P. W. Singer has fashioned a definitive text on the future of war around the subject of robots. In no previous book have I gotten such an intrinsic sense of what the military future will be like.”
— Robert D. Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground

“Singer's book is as important (very) as it is readable (highly), as much a fascinating account of new technology as it is a challenging appraisal of the strategic, political and ethical questions that we must now face. This book needs to be widely read -- not just within the defense community but by anyone interested in the most fundamental questions of how our society and others will look at war itself.”
—Anthony Lake, former U.S. National Security Advisor and Professor of Diplomacy , School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

“Drawing from sources spanning popular culture and hard science, Singer reveals how the relationship between man and robot is changing the very nature of war. He details technology that has, until now, been the stuff of science fiction: lethal machines that can walk on water or hover outside windows, machines joined in networks or thinking for themselves. I found this book fascinating, deep, entertaining, and frightening.”
— Howard Gordon, writer and executive producer of 24, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"Lively, penetrating, and wise ... A warmly human (even humorous) account of robotics and other military technologies that focuses where it should: on us."
—Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the Navy and Director, National Semiconductor Corporation

“Will wars someday be fought by Terminator-like machines? In this provocative and entertaining new book, one of our brightest young strategic thinkers suggests the answer may well be “yes.” Singer’s sprightly survey of robotics technology takes the reader from battlefields and cutting-edge research labs to the dreams of science fiction writers. In the process, he forces us to grapple with the strategic and ethical implications of the “new new thing” in war.”
—Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; author of The Savage Wars of Peace and War Made New

“Weaving together immaculate academic research with a fan boy’s lexicon of popular culture, Singer looks at the people and technologies beta-testing tomorrow's wars today. The result is a book both hilarious and hair-raising that poses profound ethical questions about the creation and use of ever more powerful killing machines.”
—Gideon Yago, writer, MTV News

“Blew my f***ing mind…This book is awesome.”
—John Stewart, The Daily Show

"A superb book…If you read Wired for War you'll actually get a sense for the complexities that we are creating. We're not making a simpler world with these robots I don't think at all, I think we're making a more complex world, and that is something I got from this great book.
—General James Mattis, USMC, NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation and the Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command

"In his latest work, Wired for War, Singer confesses his passion for science fiction as he introduces us to a glimpse of things to come–the new technologies that will shape wars of the future. His new book addresses some ominous and little-discussed questions about the military, technology, and machinery."
— Harper’s

"...A vivid picture of the current controversies and dazzling possibilities of war in the digital age."
—Kirkus Reviews

“Genuinely Provocative”
— Book Forum

"…Full of vignettes on the use of robotics, first-person interviews with end- users, what has occurred in the robotics industry in its support of the nation, and what is "coming soon." Some of the new ideas are just downright mind-blowing..."
—The Armchair General

"An admitted war geek, P.W. Singer obsesses—over the course of 400-plus pages— about the growing role of robots in combat. His tone is oddly jovial considering the unsettling subject matter, but you won't find a more comprehensive look at mechanized death outside science fiction."
—Details Magazine

"If you want the whole story of remote warfare, pick up a copy of Wired for War, in which Peter Singer, a fellow of the non-profit Brookings Institution in Washington DC, exhaustively documents the Pentagon's penchant for robotics. Think of it as the next step in the mechanisation of war: swords and arrows, guns, artillery, rockets, bombers, robots."
— The New Scientist

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (January 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201986
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201981
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,468 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars JohnHawley El Paso, Texas, March 10, 2009

By	John K. Hawley (El Paso, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I work as an engineering psychologist in a U.S. Army organization that is in the forefront of R&D on military robotics and automated command and control systems. Hence, I read P.J. Sanger's Wired for War with considerable interest. I can relate to much of his discussion on an experiential basis. We routinely encounter and try to provide solutions for many of the problems Sanger discusses. As a point of interest, I was the technical lead on an Army effort looking at human performance contributors to the fratricides by the Patriot air defense missile system during the recent Gulf War mentioned on page 125. As is usually the case in a casual summary of complex events, Sanger's description of these events is superficially accurate, but there is a lot more to the story. Also, I've been told that his remark on page 197 about the radar on the DIVAD gun locking onto the exhaust fan of a port-a-potty is an urban legend. I've heard about this alleged incident, but I've never been able to find anyone in the Army air defense community who ever witnessed it personally. We work tests on that class of systems all the time, so we know the players.
Overall, I thought Sanger did a good job of describing the state of the art in robotic military systems and addressing the potential sociological and psychological impact of using these systems in current and future military operations. From my perspective, the central operational issue in using armed robotic systems in combat is balancing autonomy with effective human control (the focus of Sanger's Chapter 6.). In my view, he correctly refers to this topic as the "Issue-That-Must-Not-Be-Discussed." I was particularly struck by the difference between the attitude of those having the most on-the-ground experience with these systems (e.g. Robert Quinn's remark on page 124 that he can't even imagine how unmanned systems would "ever be able to autonomously fire their weapons.") and the almost casual attitude on this subject expressed by many of the decision makers we deal with daily. Their attitude is best summarized by the remark attributed to an unnamed former secretary of the army who responded "No" when asked if he could identify any challenges that the greater use of unmanned systems would bring to the military.
The reality associated with greater autonomy on the part of armed robotic systems is that there will likely be many more "oops moments" (Sanger's page 196) than are politically and operationally tolerable. Based on our assessment of the Patriot fratricides during the recent Gulf War, these incidents were an example of an oops moment on the part of an armed robotic system. If the past is any indicator of the future, such incidents will result in initial "surprise" and "shock" on the part of the leadership that these advanced systems behaved thusly, followed by the imposition of restrictive rules of engagements that effectively take the offending system out of the fight. Sanger is correct that we need a more realistic assessment by those in policy-making jobs of the potential problems associated with the use of armed, autonomous robotic systems in actual combat--but I'm not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
Armed robotic systems will be fielded. They will be allowed to operate autonomously. Oops moments will occur. And unpleasant fallout and scapegoating will take place in the aftermath of such incidents. The issue of control in accord with human intent versus the illusion of control is complex and will not easily be solved. Software glitches aside, oops moments will mostly result from what Dave Woods of Ohio State University terms the "brittleness problem of automata:" An inability to satisfactorily handle unusual or ambiguous situations. I fear that the "Strong AI" necessary to satisfactorily address the brittleness problem will remain tantalizingly just over the technical horizon for some time to come.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly eye-opening book, superbly researched and written, February 2, 2009

By	James Beswick "2.0" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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I first heard the author talking on NPR about this topic, and both that interview and the first chapter of this book show his excitement and deep interest and understanding of this subject. For such a weighty hardback, it's remarkably hard to put down, and each section evolves intelligently from the last. I particularly enjoyed the references to modern culture, given that robotics has largely been a subject of science fiction in the last few decades rather than yielding anything practical in reality.

Well, at least so I thought - it turns out that over 12,000 robots are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak. The companies producing these machines were spurred by the very real necessities of dealing with guerrilla warfare, and avoiding the human toll associated with such difficult environments. Through a combination of human-controlled and artificially-intelligent hardware, these robots back up our soldiers and provide a super-human level of robustness and accuracy.

The author raises the complex moral questions associated with having machines killing people on the frontline, and the issues that arise when mistakes occur. There's also a fascinating discussion of stress disorders that remote pilots are suffering from - these men and women sit in offices in the US, controlling machines on the battleground far away, and return home for dinner every day after "a day's fighting".

It's also interesting to look at the design of some of the machines and their control interfaces, many of which look like Wall-E with a machine gun. Weapons companies have copied controllers from the Playstation and Xbox, taking advantage of a generation that is comfortable using these devices without extensive retraining. The distance between shooting people on Halo and making real life-or-death decisions in operating a military robot is almost absurdly non-existent.

I don't want to steal the book's thunder at all since this is one of the most gripping reads I've found in a while, and would highly recommend to everyone. While not a robotics book or a war book, it falls somewhere in the middle, and the topic is enthusiastically presented. The most chilling part is clearly that the science fiction of movies such as The Terminator is really not too far away, and we're on a cusp of a robotics revolution that will be as profound as the domination of the PC.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making war impersonal , February 2, 2009

By	Julie Neal "The Complete Walt Disney World" (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This frightening and funny book helped me understand the future of war in all its technological splendor. What was once the stuff of science fiction, such as machines thinking for themselves, is now our military's reality.

Unfortunately, as Isaac Asimov quotes in Wired for War: "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

The military began using robots primarily to fill the "Three D" roles people were poor at: jobs that were Dull, Dirty or Dangerous. Unmanned systems "don't need to sleep, don't need to eat, and find monitoring empty desert sands as exciting as partying at the Playboy mansion." The use of unmanned systems has exploded, especially since the attacks of September 11. As one U.S. Navy researcher puts it: "The robot is our answer to the suicide bomber."

I heard an NPR interview with the author, and what struck me most was his description of how impersonal war has become. Almost like playing video games, people here in the states can launch missiles and cause all kinds of mayhem on battlefields overseas, untouched by all the messiness of being on site. Singer reveals the disdain combat troops sometimes have for these faraway operators, even though they are on the same side.

All sorts of pop culture references are woven through the book, including The Iron Giant, The Matrix, Night of the Living Dead, Predator, Star Wars, The Terminator, Total Recall, Wall-E and the Nintendo Wii. There is also a glossy-page insert of 32 black and white photographs.

The book poses provocative ethical questions about the new trend of one-step-removed killing. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.

Here's the chapter list:

Author's Note: Why a Book on Robots and War?

Part One: The Change We Are Creating
1. Introduction: Scenes from a Robot War
2. Smart Bombs, Norma Jeane, and Defecating Ducks: A Short History of Robotics
3. Robotics for Dummies
4. To Infinity and Beyond: The Power of Exponential Trends
5. Coming Soon to a Battlefield Near You: The Next Wave of Warbots
6. Always in the Loop? The Arming and Autonomy of Robots
7. Robotic Gods: Our Machine Creators
8. What Inspires Them: Science Fiction's Impact on Science Reality
9. The Refuseniks: The Roboticists Who Just Say No

Part Two: What Change is Creating For Us
10. The Big Cebrowski and the Real RMA: Thinking About Revolutionary Techniques
11. "Advanced" Warfare: How We Might Fight With Robots
12. Robots That Don't Like Apple Pi: How the U.S. Could Lose the Unmanned Revolution
13. Open-Source Warfare: College Kids, Terrorists, and Other New Users of Robots at War
14. Losers and Luddites: The Changing Battlefields Robots Will Fight On and the New Electronic Sparks of War
15. The Psychology of Warbots
16. YouTube War: The Public and Its Unmanned Wars
17. Changing the Experience of War and the Warrior
18. Command and Control... Alt-Delete: New Technologies and Their Effect on Leadership
19. Who Let You in the War? Technology and the New Demographics of Conflict
20. Digitizing the Laws of War and Other Issues of (Un)Human Rights
21. A Robot Revolt? Talking About Robot Ethics
22. Conclusion: The Duality of Robots and Humans