App-Centric Warfare

How To Dominate the 21st Century Battlefield

Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve, 2017

We need to be fast. We need to be agile. Bureaucratic bloat threatens to upend American military dominance. We need to embrace the way private tech companies operate, or we risk complete catastrophe.

What works in Silicon Valley works on a battlefield, so it’s about time we actually moved to fully integrate our military with the cutting edge of what American technology can achieve.

We’re not moving fast enough.

Hardware is out. Software is in.

That is why I’m introducing what I’m now calling “App-Centric Warfare.”

Are you tired of actually doing an analysis of the battlefield? You think those CONOPs are a big waste of time?

We can fix that. By partnering with Kalshi—you no longer have to guess how an engagement will unfold! The power of crowd-sourced gambling will determine exactly what your chances are for seizing any particular objective!

By leveraging the wisdom of crowds, we can forever eliminate the fog of war. If you want, you can even opt in for a parlay to see if a particular operational campaign can meet all of its given phase lines!

Just think of the extra motivation you’ll have to seize a fortified position when you know your commanding officer has bet his children’s college fund on your success!

You thought King and Country inspired people? Just wait until you see what the men will do for DraftKings and Polymarket!

Now you might be thinking to yourself, what about the actual physical instruments of war that I need?

Well, first off, you’re clearly not listening. I said hardware was out. We don’t do physical instruments anymore. What are you? 65 years old? You’re not getting the Silicon Valley mindset.

But okay, fine, let’s say you still insist on resisting change.

I’d like to introduce what I’m tentatively calling Netflix for 155mm rounds.

For too long, we have relied upon stockpiling munitions and spare parts for our operations. It’s wasteful. It’s redundant. We’re not disrupting enough.

Why would I even want something that I’m not using in that exact moment?

We shouldn’t expect our warfighters to have to wade through endless paperwork to get what they need to the front. Why are we planning? We can utilize private solutions to our problems.

Your unit simply needs to sign up, and voila, you now get your monthly ration of 155mm rounds depending on which service level you select.

Oh, you want to share munitions with an adjacent unit on the line? Easy. Just upgrade your service so more than one unit can access your munitions at once.

Running out of munitions because of your ability to have sufficient material for a prolonged fight? Well, that won’t happen because through the power of AI, we will have the exact amount of munitions we need at all times.

Or how about this?

We’ve relied upon outdated concepts of personnel management, like “we need infantry to hold ground” or “we have a shortage of artillerymen,” for too long.

It’s time we shake things up.

You know how Tinder disrupted dating? Okay, well, I’d like to introduce an app I’m tentatively calling Front Finder.

Don’t like how your Staff Sergeant constantly yells at you for not shaving? Is your trench too uncomfortable? Did your 155mm subscription not deliver the munitions you needed this month?

Well, just log in to Front Finder, and you can transfer to a sector that fits your preferred operational tempo! If the commanding officer likes you back, it’s as simple as that!

But what we’re really talking about here is warfighting. How can we truly embrace the Founder Mindset and turn the DoD into a super sleek 80-person company that can win the next fight?

It’s simple. AI.

We’re going to do what every Silicon Valley company is doing now and replace our entire workforce with ChatGPT.

Who needs those fickle human beings to actually do the work of fighting in a conflict? They complain constantly. They never show up for PT on time. You have to feed them. They always buy a Mustang for a 27% interest rate.

No longer! Using the most cutting-edge technology of the private sector, we’ll merely create an entire military that can run autonomously!

We simply need one genius at the top to guide us. Everyone else just gets in the way of executing our vision. Utilizing large-language models, we can simply have one guy in the Pentagon entering prompts, and then the whole machine can spring into action!

Speaking of which, we’re now going to be solely creating kinetic cyber effects.

You might have thought that warfare involved actual kinetic action between combatants. It involved closing with and destroying an enemy force. We had to execute combined arms maneuver to force the capitulation of an adversary.

But think of it this way. We want to be like the private sector. Does a Google employee get shot at when they’re at work? No? So why should we?

No! Companies like Google and Palantir are a success story because they managed to adapt themselves to the new revolution! We’re never going to be able to recruit the top talent we lose to business school every year with this kind of a mindset.

Why bother with the messy, bloody, and chaotic headache that is ground operations when, instead, we can just mess with someone’s ability to make an ATM withdrawal?

I say, out with the infantry! In with the coders!

Oh, but you might say, “War is a political phenomenon! You can’t just coerce an adversary to your will without an actual ground force!”

Or you might say, “How would that even work? We aren’t even there! We’re just doing random things on a computer!”

The more astute observer may even point out, “What the hell is a kinetic cyber effect, that’s not even something that happens in the physical world!”

Well, again, you don’t get it; hardware is out. Software is in.

Our adversaries will simply see their odds plummet in the gambling markets and throw in the towel. No need to even engage them with real munitions (which will be great for the bottom line of our 155mm subscription service).

It’s time we updated Clausewitz for the 21st century.

War is, after all, nothing but the continuation of the creation of shareholder value by other means.