There will be those quick to trash this book as sensationalist, and they are partly right. What most people, including the critics, do not realize is that Winn Schwartau went out on a limb in the late 1980's and early 1990's and is *the* primary reason Congress got concerned enough about these issues to demand a Critical Infrastructure Protection program funded at over $1B–it was Winn, not others quick to claim the line, that testified to Congress about an “electronic Pearl Harbor” on 24 June 1991. This book is unabashedly populist and seeks to make this very complex threat entertaining and understandable, and for that reason alone it is worth the time to consider. There are many other serious books for engineers, this is the one for anyone at all from housewife to student to executive. Great airplane book, won't save the world, but will certainly increase your consciousness across the board. Worthy.
Alvin & Heidi Toffler have always written and spoken as a team, but this is the first book where Heidi has been included. Future Shock and PowerShift remain their two most important works, this one comes in third. They start off with a compelling reason for buying the book, a quote from Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Today, right now, there are 26 conflicts going on around the world killing more than 1000 people a year; 78 “low intensity” conflicts killing more than 100 but less than 1000 people a year; and 178 violent political conflicts causing fewer than 100 deaths per year–source is the PIOOM project in The Netherlands. There are also 16 genocidal campaigns ongoing as we speak, and another 18 emerging–from Rwanda and Burundi to Sri Lanka to East Timor to obscure sections of China and Russia. This is a serious book by serious researchers who had the good fortune to be prescient and to become world-renowned futurists. The book is strongest on Third Wave wars and niche wars, does a very creditable job of covering a wide range of unconventional forms of conflict, and ends, somewhat disappointingly, with a useful but less than gripping discussion of “peace forms”. Fun to read, including the chapter on “The Future of the Spy.”
Together with the State of the World Atlas, this book ranks as one of the very best and most useful compilations of what I call “strategic generalizations”, but with the very great added value of being presented in a graphical form that is easy to understand. As the international media becomes less and less useful as a means of appreciating how global conditions threaten our own internal security and prosperity, guide books like this one become all the more valuable to citizens and their elected representatives. This is an essential desk reference for every student striving to learn how to think, not just memorize, and for every adult who cares to understand just how unstable and diminishing is the world we are leaving to our children. The book is *not* out-of-date in 2000, but we would all benefit from a new edition coming out that might expand on the core value of the 1997 edition.
Not Just Graphics, But Sources and Perspective are Stellar,
August 19, 2000
Dan Smith
his book, together with The State of War and Peace, is a desktop classic that would make an outstanding gift for any student of any age, and for any adult concerned about the state of the world we are leaving to our children. This is much more than a book of graphic generalizations; as a researcher myself I especially appreciate the specific identification of the sources that were consulted, and the summaries of each of the major political-legal, socio-economic, techno-demographic, ideo-cultural, and natural-geographic conditions threatening the stability of the “Whole Earth”. I dare to think this book should be required reading for our elected representatives as well as our military commanders charged with “shaping” their regional environments.
John English is a brilliant tactician and historian who has written THE masterpiece on the origins of Infantry. I would have English describe infantry to about the Vietnam era and have Col Dan Bolger take the coverage from there to the future in his own book Death Ground: American infantry in battle. Bruce Gudmundsson was attached to the updated English book to attempt to bring the work up to date.
Taking the masterpiece for what it is, it delivers an important lesson mechanized maneuverists do not want to realize—that the German “blitzkrieg” died in the forests and cities of Russian when it met infantry that would not crumble if surrounded or cut-off from comfortable supply lines. Using a defense-in-depth, a nation on a total war footing can absorb and defeat another less committed nation that hopes to use a smaller force to penetrate and collapse. Many, maybe even most people mistake the German defeat in Russia–and hence WWII—with the cold Russian winter, and this is incorrect. The next critical—perhaps most important lesson and contribution English makes to the defense of freedom is—that a mechanized “combined arms” unit is ONLY AS GOOD AS ITS INFANTRY. When terrain and weather go sour, artillery and tanks will reach a point where they cannot contribute–and the entire battle then falls on the infantry. When this took place in Russia–the German infantry was NOT up to the task with inadequate numbers, clothing and bolt-action rifles. English points out and lesser historians should take note–that the German war machine was good together but not really that good because its PARTS were weak. When combined-arms technotactics could not be employed in the forests of Russia, the battle rested on the German infantry and it failed.
The cryptic lesson here is that we need GOOD infantry in large numbers and we don't get it by placing them into the back of armored vehicles in less than squad sizes, shut off from what's going on because they can't open a hatch out and see because we put a turret on the vehicle and we are afraid it will rotate into them. The Army made this mistake with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, is trying to correct it with its vehicle for the new Brigade Combat Teams while the marines are about to repeat the error with a huge autocannon turret on their next generation amphibious assault vehicle. The second lesson of English is still being ignored—those that do mechanized combined arms don't value infantry action—they ride too long in their vehicles and get ambushed by missiles and RPGs fired from enemies hiding in key terrain that should have been taken first by the infantry. To do this you need a large amount of aggressive, not complacent infantry. As the Russians found out in Grozny, when their armored vehicles became flaming coffins, the battle then falls on the infantry to clear out enemies hiding in urban terrain.
This is not to say English believes in a “Super Infantry” since we saw in Mogadishu the best light infantry in the world get shot up because it was without armored fighting vehicles to shield it from enemy fire. What English is saying is that we should start with quality infantry when building forces and not in the process of creating combined-arms organizations ruin the infantry capability by reducing numbers, battle awareness and use as a separate maneuver element.
On Infantry should be required reading for ALL U.S. military personnel coupled with Bolger's Death Ground. I'd like to see the book updated to the present with a fresh perspective for the 21st Century where we apply English's lessons to the future battlefield.
From the Top Cyber-Sleuth, A Cold Shower on Cyber-Hype,
May 29, 2000
Clifford Stoll
When Cliff Stoll, the brilliant man who caught the top East German electronic criminal, speaks on the failures of our cyber-culture, we must listen carefully. “Our networks are awash in data. A little of it's information. A smidgen of this shows up as knowledge….The Internet, that great digital dumpster, confers not power, not prosperity, not perspicacity…Our networks can be frustrating, expensive, unreliable connections that get in the way of useful work. It is an overpromoted hollow world, devoid of warmth and human kindness. The heavily promoted information infrastructure addresses few social needs or business concerns. At the same time, it directly threatens precious parts of our society, including schools, libraries, and social institutions.”
Knowledge Capital and Calculating Shareholder Value,
May 29, 2000
Paul Strassmann
This is the definitive book on “knowledge capital” (his trademarked term) and how to calculate shareholder value in the New Economy. In general, one should buy this book to be persuaded of Paul's brilliance, and then hire him to implement the ideas as a strategic consultant. Not for the weak-minded CEO or CIO, as it impales most corporate oxes and concludes that in general, there has been either a negative return on investment, or no discernible contribution to corporate profit, from steadily increasing information technology budgets.
Infantry won WWII, English explains why, August 13, 2000
