The Speed of War

by Brian Hioe

The other day I covered a protest march for Gaza. After an afternoon of marching around in the brutal heat, the emcee, a friend, remarked that the distance we’d covered that afternoon was the amount of territory obliterated by a single one of the hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs dropped by Israel on Gaza.

The technological sophistication that goes into amplifying the capacity to kill is boggling. Since I write on military affairs once in a while, I can tell you that modern-day bombs with advanced targeting systems are best thought of, not as simple incendiary explosives, but as self-destructing flying computers designed for the sole purpose of taking lives.

Today’s computer technology, going back to the advanced chips that now power your computer or iPhone, is linked historically to the U.S. military development of targeting systems during the Cold War and Vietnam. The original purpose of the tech we use all day in our daily lives was to throw bombs through the air with greater and ever-more-deadly accuracy.