How Tech Almost Lost the War

An anonymous reader writes "Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq? Wired says so. Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies. But the Pentagon got their network theory all wrong, with too few nodes and a closed architecture. Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq."

Comments

Re:Blame the Geeks?

[greg_barton]

"A more efficient killing machine" in modern military parlance is a machine that strikes more of the right targets and fewer of the wrong targets.

Firing a tank round down the street in an urban area (as the parent post suggested) doesn't strike me as efficient in that regard.

Re:Actually....

[slashdot_commentator]

So let me see if I got this straight...

You want to give an OLPC to every Iraqi, including every Al-Queda member, Sunni and Shiite insurgent, and give them the ability to set off bombs remotely, have cells communicate by texting, and swamp specific network sites with garbage traffic from zombie PCs?

I'd say you're at least thinking, but Paul Bremer was a user with great ideas. They included turning Iraq into a Libertarian paradise, disenfranchise competent Sunnis from the gov't, and disband the Iraqi military. Frankly, I'm kinda sick of great ideas without thinking them out.