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Thursday, January 7, 2016

Technological competition

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of High Tech War


imageIn fall of 2014, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his plan to maintain US superiority against rising powers (i.e. Russia and China). His claim was that the US cannot lose its technological edge – and thus superiority – against a modernizing Russia and a rapidly militarizing China. To ensure this edge, he called for the “third Offset Strategy.”
The previous two offset strategies were premised on Cold War rivalry and the belief that one can outspend the other through arms races. The first offset desired to gain dominance over Soviet Russia’s feared advantage in manpower and technological prowess. The US sought to deter the Soviets from engaging in a nuclear war. Aside from building up vast arrays of nuclear weapons, both at the tactical and strategic size, as well as creating and detonating thermonuclear weapons, and detonating nuclear weapons in space, both sides amazingly did not engage in direct hostilities. 

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