Predicting the Future of War is Hard

This is an interesting discussion about a strategy book that is now on my wish list to purchase.

The tension between political science and history is included. Which reflects my background. Political science seemed more useful in the Cold War for employment. Yet my bachelor's degree was a double major in political science and history because I basically got the history part by accident. And then I got my MA in history.

And to keep this personal (it is my blog, after all), I had an independent study on the Correlates of War project under J. David Singer who was a co-founder of that effort to quantify war outcomes. I was exposed to it in a poli sci class with him. Smart man. Not conservative. But back then liberalism didn't have the same level of intolerance that has infected our colleges today. Pity.

I still have the data set (on 3 x 5 cards) of an effort to factor distance into the measurements of power to provide better predictive power in war outcomes for the data.

I never got far enough to have any conclusions on that. And I became skeptical of the validity of much of the data in the process. My early exposure to problems of global warming modeling, I suppose.

Although the concept appeals to me (perhaps because of the Foundation science fiction series) even if I lack much faith in it.

And here's an entry of mine into future warfare. FWIW.