Former 67-tear-old Centcom Commander and now Defense Secretary Lloyd Ausitin said in a speech at the Pentagon today that the future of warfare will look very different in the future. Austin sees more technological and better integration will allow the Pentagon to “understand faster, decide faster and act faster” in the future. Austin wholeheartedly supports 78-year-old President Joe Biden’s decision to pullout of Afghanistan Sept. 11 on the 20th anniversary of Obama bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While Austin talks of improved technology in the military, Russia and China’s military have rapid deployment forces, capable of swiftly invading sovereign states and annexing territory with little resistance. So when it comes to new warfare, the old models still apply. Austin wants more cyber-security or cyber-warfare part of the Pentagon’s arsenal.
When Austin talks of technological advances, he’s referring to sophisticated hacking skills leaving other sovereign states guessing what the Pentagon would do next. Something akin to the Israeli model where infecting computers with viruses was a way to disrupt deadly operations, like stopping fissile material to eventually make A-bombs. “The way we’ll fight the next war is going to look very different from the way we fought the last ones,” Austin expects to say on a trip to Hawaii-based U.S. Pacific Command Ausin’s statements hint at more aggressive cyber-warfare, where the Pentagon preempts conventional shooting or military intervention by disrupting military operation without firing a single shot. Austin mentioned nothing about the “Adromeda Strain”-type warfare if you believe the coornavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 was the first shot across the bow in global biological warfare.
When you consider that over 590,000 American civilians have perished, more than all the 20th or 21st century wars combined, China’s sent a very powerful message to the Pentagon that the U.S. should not mess with China. Believing that the Covid-19 global pandemic was simply, as the Chinese insist, a naturally occurring event, then there’s no preparation for stopping the next outbreak. Austin’s remarks hinted at the Pentagon’s cyber-activity, not biological warfare. Clearly, the Covid-19 global pandemic could have been an act of biological warfare against the Chinese people that inadvertently spread around the globe killing 3,143,642 people. While there’s no evidence yet that China deliberately released a bio-weapon on the world, that doesn’t mean that the novel coronavirus occurred naturally.. World Heath Organization [WHO] has not ruled out a laboratory-made virus.
Austin talked about asymmetric warfare in discussing U.S. plans to pull out of Afghanistan after 20-years. Pentagon officials have been dealing with asymmetric or guerrilla warfare since the Korean War, through Vietnam to today’s counter-terrorism approaches, using the Internet and cyber-technology to intercept terrorist acts before they take place. When the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan, Austin knows that without a safety check on the Taliban and other terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State [IS], the U.S. backed government of 71-year-old Ashraf Ghani will likely fall at some point. It’s wishful thinking that the U.S. could use only cyber-warfare to supersede boots-on-the-ground. Improvised explosive devises [IEDs], suicide bombing, Kalashnikovs, rocket propelled grenades [RPGs], all common to guerrilla war seen in Afghanistan will likely to continue when the U.S. leaves.
Austin said he spent “most of the past two decades executing the last of the old wars,” bitter lessons learned from the past. But Austin’s kidding himself thinking the Taliban, al-Qaeda or IS will give up their guerrilla-fighting methods, relying on anything more technological. When it comes to Russia, it’s obvious that when President Vladimir Putin wants to seize sovereign territory, he uses his rapid deployment force and air force to paralyze the opposition. Austin knows that today’s conventional or guerrilla warfare isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s science fiction to think that computer-based simulations, cyber-warfare, predator drones or even space technology, with or without nuclear weapons, will replace a well-trained-and-equipped fighting force on land or in the air or sea. Whatever happens in Afghanistan after the U.S. pullout Sept. 11 won’t be due to Internet or cyber-warfare.
Autin didn’t address truly ominous threat from China in the post –Covid-19 pandemic era, if containment happens with eventual widespread use of vaccines. What happened in Wuhan China should be a concern to Austin and war-planners at the Pentago who never expect that a lethal virus could be manufactured in a lab and unleashed on the world. Whether admitted to or not by U.S. officials—or anyone else—more evidence points that the deadly novel cornoaviurs was manufactured in a bioweapons’ lab in Wuha, then inadvertently escaped or was deliberately released. With over 590,000 deaths in the U.S., Austin can’t overlook the Pentagon’s role in containing deadly plagues that could be unleashed on the country. China has paid virtually no price for 3, 143,163 deaths worldwide, all because the Chinese government—and WHO—refused to come clean early about the deadly virus.
