For the U.S. military, the manifestations of this revolution have covered the full spectrum from the dramatic to the prosaic. Unmanned aerial vehicles, ships, and ground systems now carry increasingly sophisticated surveillance capabilities and precision guided weapons. Less visible, but also hugely important, has been development of the ability to integrate and analyze vast quantities of intelligence from all sources and determine precise locations of friendly and enemy elements. Finally, we cannot overlook growth of the seemingly matter-of-fact but nonetheless essential reliance on email, video teleconferences, and applications like PowerPoint to communicate, share information, plan, and perform the tasks of command and control.

Information technologies that did not exist at the time of the first Gulf War are now so fundamental to the conduct of military operations that it is difficult to imagine functioning without them. And the growth of the internet, social media, and now the “Internet of Things” represents a further stage in the information technology revolution whose full consequences are still unfolding. Nonetheless, some preliminary implications of such cyber capabilities for warfare are already clear.

First, cyberspace is itself now an entire new battlefield domain, adding to the existing domains of land, sea, air, subsea, and space. This reality has enormous ramifications for military doctrine, operations, organizational structures, training, materiel, leadership development, personnel requirements, and military facilities. Most significantly, it adds a powerful new element to the challenges of the simultaneous “multi-domain warfare” in which we are now already engaged and for which we need to do more to prepare in the future.

Second, cyber technology is adding another element to the already ongoing dispersion and fragmentation of global power. While no nation has contributed more to the growth of the internet and the digitized world than the United States (and no nation has developed more sophisticated cyber military capabilities), the nature of these technologies ultimately presents one more disruptive challenge to the preeminence that the U.S. has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War, as others exploit the potential of offensive cyber capabilities in new and increasingly sophisticated and diabolical ways. Examples of this include the use of cyberspace by extremist networks like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to inspire far-flung terrorist strikes; by Russia to wage ideological and political warfare that seeks to undermine the cohesion and self-confidence of the Western democracies; and by China to collect the technological know-how that is speeding its already rapid rise and undercutting America’s conventional military edge and industrial advantages.

Third, cyber capabilities are further blurring the boundaries between wartime and peacetime, and between civilian and military spaces. These are distinctions that have, for various reasons, been eroding in recent decades and which technological developments are now accelerating. At present, it is likewise clear that offensive capabilities are outstripping defensive and retaliatory options. And as long as difficulties in identifying and attributing responsibility for cyberattacks persist, that reality is likely to undercut deterrence and encourage aggression in cyberspace.

Yet even as technological changes inspire us to speculate on the future of warfare, perhaps the most important insights about the implications of the cyber age can be gleaned from the past.

While technology promises to disrupt the conduct of war, it is equally important to recognize what it will not alter—namely, the causes of war, which continue to lie in the character of humanity. As Thucydides documented more than two millennia ago, it is the elemental forces of fear, honor, and interest that are the wellsprings of conflict, and it is often the choices of individual leaders that determine how conflicts develop. It was for this reason, in fact, that, when I was in uniform, I argued against the concept of “network-centric warfare”—put forward in the late 1990s—and instead contended that a better formulation would be “network-enabled, leadership-centric warfare.” It is, after all, still leaders who determine strategies and make the key decisions. And even as development of autonomous weapons systems and other such capabilities proceeds, parameters for actions by such systems will continue to be established by human beings.

Furthermore, history suggests that humanity’s capacity for technical innovation often outpaces our strategic thinking and development of ethical norms. Indeed, the methodical development of doctrine around nuclear weapons by the “Wizards of Armageddon” in the 1950s and 1960s, which did much to help prevent a nuclear apocalypse, appears to have been the exception rather than the norm. More typical is the experience of the European powers of the early 20th century, which failed to recognize that the mass industrialized armies they were constructing were the components of a doomsday machine that would unleash a civilizational slaughter that none of the combatants had previously considered possible. As we and other major powers race to develop cutting-edge cyber capabilities—expanding swiftly into realms such as robotics, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence—we would be wise to devote equal energy and attention to considering the full implications of our ingenuity. Security in the century ahead will depend more on our moral imagination—and with it, the ability to develop concepts of restraint—than it will on amazing technological breakthroughs.

This in turn suggests a final reality about warfare in the age of cyber. Regardless of the innovations that lie ahead, technology by itself will neither doom nor rescue the world. Responsibility for our fate, for better or worse, will remain stubbornly human.

The post As Machines Wage War, Human Nature Endures appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I used to take audiences on a 125,000-year tour of these two venerable institutions. I’d tell them about bonobos, chimps, and baboons giving sanctuary to members of enemy primate communities; about the ancient custom of seeking sanctuary by touching the garment or body of a powerful priest or ruler; about 1,000 years of church sanctuary in England and other countries; about the Underground Railroad, Holocaust rescuers, and the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s.

But recently, at a high school in suburban Maryland, the students’ first question was, “What can we do to help refugees and asylum seekers right now?” They also wanted to know how I, as an activist, keep going in the face of politicians’ racist and xenophobic attacks on people fleeing persecution, torture and murder.

“First of all,” I said, “I’m a very stubborn person, prone to indignation about injustice.” I explained that I try to undertake modest efforts to help migrants in my local community, so I can see short-term, positive results. And I said that those who defend and protect refugees and asylum seekers are part of something much bigger than themselves, something that’s been going on for thousands of years.

Giving refuge to the stranger is in our DNA. We’re a highly social species, as likely to welcome outsiders as to drive them away. Hospitality, protection, welcome, and refuge are ingrained in our customs and behavior. In many societies studied by anthropologists and historians, hospitality may be extended to members of hostile communities. Offering refuge to strangers diversifies the gene pool, encourages innovation, and enriches cultural practices. It institutionalizes empathy, mercy, sociability, and openness.

Shelter for those accused of wrongdoing or fleeing from persecution or slavery has existed in every major religious tradition and in numerous societies since time immemorial. Its recorded history goes back at least 5,000 years. Sanctuaries have included altars, churches, temples, cities, and sacred groves. Asylum comes from the Greek word asylos, “inviolable,” which referred to sacred spaces in ancient Greece to which slaves could flee from cruel masters.

Even the ancient Romans, who were not renowned for their compassion, built temples where slaves and miscreants could flee. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church borrowed sanctuary from other traditions. Church sanctuary lasted for more than a thousand years in Europe, until governments abolished it in the 17th century, because it interfered with their control of the legal system. The Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 and laid the foundations of modern international law, proclaimed provision of asylum as a sovereign right of nation states. Thus asylum, a secular institution under state control, replaced religious sanctuary in the law.

Over the past 500 years, government asylum and religious sanctuary have sometimes run along parallel lines, sometimes conflicted and sometimes diverged. During the 20th century, governments started passing laws to restrict access to asylum, especially before, during, and after wars, when massive numbers of desperate, persecuted people sought refuge.

In response to the flight of refugees from Germany and other European countries in the 1930s, the principle of nonrefoulement came into international law. It stipulates that no asylum seeker may be returned to a country where he or she will be persecuted, tortured, or killed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, proclaims, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” But despite signing many international agreements and passing national laws that mandate these principles, governments have often violated them for political and economic reasons.

So sanctuary usually operates outside or against the law. The Underground Railroad was an illegal, secret movement, some of whose leaders were prosecuted, fined, or imprisoned. Holocaust rescuers risked death, and some were killed, for hiding thousands of Jews. The U.S. government prosecuted leaders of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement for harboring or smuggling migrants.

Yet sanctuary thrives as a powerful expression of resistance to unjust laws. It is often a deliberate act of civil disobedience. Giving sanctuary may mean accepting the risk of prosecution to obey what its practitioners consider a higher law. Sanctuary has life-saving meaning to those who seek it and is a moral imperative for those who provide it. That is where its power lies.

At the peak of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, some 400 churches and dozens of cities gave shelter to thousands of Central Americans denied asylum in the United States. The churches’ and cities’ efforts, along with widespread opposition to U.S. backing of murderous regimes in Central America, helped change U.S. foreign and immigration policies. After 1988, the U.S. government lessened support for repressive governments in that region and allowed more Central Americans to stay in the United States.

The New Sanctuary Movement started about 10 years ago, to aid Mexican and other migrants living in the shadows. Over the past two years, dozens of churches around the country have given sanctuary to undocumented people, for months at a time. The migrants waited in the safety of churches and synagogues while their lawyers negotiated with the government for suspension of deportation orders. Then the migrants returned to their U.S. families to await the outcome of their cases. These are a few among many examples of successful sanctuary, in highly publicized instances where local communities know and support migrants and their families.

For decades U.S. enforcement agents have refrained from raiding schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. The government seems to have recognized that invading traditional safe havens would arouse public outcry. However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, could cancel this “sensitive-locations policy” at any moment, leaving sanctuary-giving institutions vulnerable to government intrusion.

Even during the Obama administration, agents raided private homes without warrants, sometimes under false pretenses. They arrested undocumented high school students on their way to school, parishioners in church parking lots, and patients outside hospitals. More than 2 million undocumented people were deported from the U.S. between 2009 and 2016. ICE increased the number of detained migrants in 2016 from 34,000 to more than 40,000 per day, in hundreds of facilities. Like the Reagan administration during the 1980s, the Obama administration refused to recognize most Central American asylum claims. The government detained thousands of migrant mothers and children, even after federal courts ordered their release.

The Trump administration already has shown that it will show no more mercy toward undocumented people or would-be asylum seekers slated for detention and deportation. In response, increasing numbers of people are likely to offer sanctuary in houses of worship, educational institutions, and their own homes. As millions of desperate people flee persecution, war, and environmental disaster, and governments refuse to shelter them, asylum is under threat all over the world. But history teaches that sanctuary is an integral part of human nature. It will last as long as people of good will are ready to risk welcoming the stranger.

The post Sanctuary Is an Integral Part of Human Nature appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.