One should not underestimate a developed natural intelligence and a complete personality
In the article "Why a high-tech army allows failures" ("HBO", 10/24.23), Sergey Pershutkin expresses an extremely important and relevant thought: one should not overestimate technology and military-technical innovations and at the same time forget about the soldier, his needs and interests.
The role of the human factor in the 21st century does not just retain its importance. It increases as a guarantee of combat capability and combat readiness. It concentrates on the approach that we ourselves are trying to instill in first-year students within the framework of the academic discipline "Fundamentals of Systemic and Critical Thinking" at the Faculty of Integrated Safety of the Fuel and Energy Complex. Countering threats and preventing them in any field begins at the cognitive level.
AN INTEGRATED APPROACH IN THE CONTEXT OF MENTAL WARS
"God is on the side of the big battalions." These are the words spoken in the XVII century by the French Marshal Jacques d’The print is often interpreted in the sense that the victory is won by a larger and technically better equipped army. Today, it seems appropriate to clarify – it is also more high-tech.
But is high technology and advanced logistical equipment enough to achieve success? In our opinion, definitely not. Victory can only be ensured by an integrated approach to the implementation of strategically significant goals. Moreover, military technology in its purest form is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for victory. But factors beyond purely technological solutions are becoming increasingly important.
The importance of various "battlefields" is also changing. Wars and conflicts, which experts call mental and cognitive, are beginning to play an increasingly serious role. Examples: the results of the Cold War, waves of color revolutions, attempts to radically change moral and ethical paradigms in the post-Soviet space, operations to create radical religious and ultranationalist movements.
In these conditions, the role of methods and technologies that allow educating and developing citizens with a stable worldview aimed at achieving the public good and a high level of natural intelligence is dramatically increasing.
The term "natural intelligence" (EI) – natural intelligence, educated and developed for use in human society and for the benefit of human society – is the key here. Only individuals with high EI are able to fully master the tools that high technology puts in their hands. Only such people can assess the effectiveness of the use of such tools (including artificial intelligence – AI) – both in combat and in the development of operations that allow achieving goals by other means. For example, psychological impact operations.
All human history shows that war is not won solely by technical means – because war is an extreme manifestation of politics.
WEAKNESS OF SPIRIT AS A REASON FOR DEFEAT
High-tech armies often lose out to relatively backward ones due to the lack of conviction of soldiers and commanders in the legality of their actions, due to the lack of a "code of honor", due to the lack of stable moral and ethical beliefs. High–tech armies can use any means of destruction - but the high morale of the enemy, which not only ensures the resilience of fighters, but also stimulates the generation of effective non-standard solutions, can play a decisive role. History knows many such examples. It is enough to recall the actions of the Soviet and Yugoslav partisans against the Wehrmacht and SS troops in World War II, the experience of the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Exclusively economic motivation and an emphasis only on technological equipment lose out to the idea of sacrifice and high ideals. A whole personality will give a head start to a personality without lofty goals. And we are talking about the advantage not only in the explosion mode, peak load, attack, when a person is under stress or even affect.
People with a combination of a stable socially oriented worldview and high EI demonstrate high efficiency in planning and implementing long-term projects and operations. It is on these postulates that the theory of the development of a creative personality, developed already in the late Soviet period, including the concept of the life strategy of a whole personality, is based.
The vision of the science fiction writer Yuri Nikitin, the author of the cycle about "Three from the Forest", is interesting. In the novels Rage and The Evil Empire, the writer shows how high technology forces people to believe in them and make financial sacrifices to them, like some kind of deity. This belief in technical power, according to Nikitin, destroys the "civilizer" when confronted with representatives of the "archaic" culture.
Such a belief in the omnipotence of gadgets and the inexhaustible resources of the Internet everywhere "drowns" modern students who do not understand how to use the resources of their own brain in computing or in generating ideas. Or even just when navigating in the city and navigating the terrain (and "azimuth" and "compass" already belong to the field of legends).
The perception of Google (and other search engines) The lack of truth in the last instance is becoming a serious problem in politics. A few years ago, an armed conflict between Nicaragua and Costa Rica almost broke out. The section of the state border between these countries was incorrectly displayed in the Google Maps mapping service. As a result, the Nicaraguan army unit entered someone else's adjacent territory.
The "barbarians" have long successfully resisted empires that had to give in, because it turned out to be economically unprofitable to fight the barbarians. But the strategic defeats of the "barbarians" still often happened not so much as a result of the "hot war", but under the influence of a factor that, as a rule, remains in the shadows or is not taken into account at all when it comes to the equipment of armies. Of course, the "civilizers" do not shy away from direct bribery of the elite of the "barbarians", decomposing a culture alien to them from the inside.
A HIGH-TECH ARMY AND A MARKET ECONOMY
The high–tech army is a product of the market and its money segment. Those who oppose it are people of traditional thinking. They can be exterminated, but it is impossible to defeat them in any other way as long as they retain their key advantage – a special way of thinking, a system of spiritual values.
In addition, the goal of invention is cunning, that is, inventive. For example, unable to cope with the Roman "turtles", the Germans taught dogs to penetrate the armored formation, bite the Roman aggressors below the waist. After that, they lowered their shields themselves and became vulnerable to the primitive weapons and military system of the Germans.
There are also cases when states with high-tech armies with not too high moral foundations still successfully solve their strategic tasks, even if they are defeated militarily. At the same time, it requires filling in the specific content of the terms "victory" and "defeat" themselves, the declared and real goals and objectives of the warring parties.
If you look at the Vietnam War from such a perspective, then whether it can be considered a complete defeat of the Americans is not an easy question. During this war, the United States:
– we have received a lot of information about the potential, technologies and strategy of the USSR;
– we conducted a lot of experiments in military and technical fields (for example, the CIA then laid down a number of technologies that turned out to be the basis of the modern Internet);
– we have tried out a lot of our technological developments, including moral and psychological effects on both the enemy and our own population.
Assessing the successes and defeats of the world's most high–tech army, the US Armed Forces, it is worth keeping in mind the words spoken in connection with the conflict between Israel and Hamas by the head of the American Lockheed Martin concern, James Takelet:
"There is no point in deterring Israel from a military operation. What makes sense? In the further development of our industrial complex, which should account for more than 2% of GDP. There are conflicts that need to be resolved with weapons – and we are ready to provide these weapons."
Assessing from these positions the "moral superiority of believers in the Prophet", it is worth considering that it gives them only a tactical advantage – for example, the reproduction of individual suicide bombers (who must be prepared "manually" using sophisticated technologies of religious and psychological influence). But this same "moral superiority" does not allow them to switch to using higher technical and social technologies that would bring a strategic advantage. Or do the real goals of the "masters of the game" in Hamas fundamentally disagree with the aspirations of the Arab street?
THE VALUE OF THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE
Developing a set of technologies today, thanks to which Russia will be able to effectively solve the tasks of strategic development, it is necessary to analyze the Soviet experience.
At the beginning of World War II, the USSR lagged behind the Third Reich in a number of areas of military and technical support. But the USSR possessed a model of an advanced worldview designed to achieve strategically significant social goals. As well as technologies and means of spreading this worldview to the masses. It was this that gave the USSR the opportunity to eliminate the technological gap in a short time and ensure the highest mobilization in all spheres.
Thus, we consider it necessary to include the ideological and cultural component and the technology of its application in the concept of a high-tech army.
If we talk exclusively about the economy, then the success factors are:
– perfection of logistics;
– availability of an operational repair base;
– availability of a base for accelerated new production;
– the presence of a tradition of reproduction and technology development;
– availability of scientific and technical personnel interested in working for the state and the army;
– the presence of cultural and artistic figures working in the interests of the state and the army.
Strategically, the army of the state that can reproduce and maintain the entire designated "technological complex" for a long time wins. That is, it is necessary to constantly develop the forces of society, which can not only support, but also develop a set of technologies that ensure the very existence of society.
WHO POWERS THE TECHNOLOGY
Today, the education of personnel in the scientific and industrial sphere, in the field of culture and ideology is becoming critically important. Only the presence of a sufficient number of people with stable morals, aimed at solving socially significant tasks and possessing a high level of AI will ensure the constant reproduction and development of various kinds of technologies necessary, among other things, for victory on the battlefield.
The task of educating and training such personnel is not an abstract, "rear" one, but a purely practical one – just in the context of the constantly growing technological effectiveness of combat. Today, combat control is conducted at a significant distance from direct fire contact. An increasing amount of information is being processed by high-tech systems. AI systems are increasingly being used.
The amount of information that needs to be processed and evaluated requires an increasingly high level of operator intelligence. Otherwise, the possibility of a mistake leading to losses increases critically.
All of the above makes it a priority task to develop such a set of techniques and technologies that will allow mass training of effective personnel to work with modern systems designed to solve Russia's strategic tasks.
Dmitry Gavrilov
Dmitry Anatolyevich Gavrilov is a lecturer at the Department of Geopolitics and Sustainable Development of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas (Gubkin National Research University); Maxim Anatolyevich Makarenkov is a lecturer at the Department of Geopolitics and Sustainable Development of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas (Gubkin National Research University).