8 THE LIMITS OF NETWORK CENTRISM
We have seen how, by focusing upon singular vulnerabilities in our military capability and by practicing the systems analysis method and techniques, one can construct a new mechanism for controlling the creative energies of command technology, a mechanism that is able to replace fully the scenario-based process we have been using during the Cold War. Under the controlling structure of this new mechanism, the advocates of Network Centrism should be asked to demonstrate their claims before receiving financial attention. It should no longer be permissible for Network Centrists to initiate acquisition programs on the mere claim that some new information technology or other would provide the nation with some advantage that may easily turn out to be fictitious, or even more egregiously, on the grounds that such technology would help Network Centrism itself. Instead, one should be able to judge aforehand whether that technology belonged within the confines imposed upon command technology, and thus reject out-of-hand as aberrant claims that lie outside. Identifying the boundary that surrounds Network Centrism would therefore be a natural denouement to our story about command technology.
It stands to reason that the location of this boundary must lie hidden within the structure that we have build to constrain Network Centrism. That constraining structure was constructed around the assertion that command technology is productive only when its energies are applied towards the development of a military capability that is consistent with the goal of reducing our singular vulnerabilities. However, as we have seen in the previous chapter, a vulnerability is nothing but an assumption whose validity could be put in question by the enemy. Reducing vulnerabilities is therefore co-extensive with decreasing the number of deniable assumptions we make when we expect our forces to visit certain effects upon our enemies.
But, as we have shown in Chapter 4, when Network Centrists claim that information technology will deliver a revolution in military affairs, they are making a number of deniable assumptions of their own. On the face of it, therefore, acquisition of the information technologies advocated by Network Centrists would contribute nothing to the goal of reducing existing singular vulnerabilities; in fact, it would move away from that goal by introducing new vulnerabilities. Consequently, to discover these new assumptions is to limit the desirability of information technologies only to those circumstances under which the deniable assumptions associated with their application are not actually denied.
By thus finding what limits the desirability of information technology, we are touching the boundary that surrounds Network Centrism. In fact, the totality of these limits constitutes the boundary we seek. Needless to say, we will not be able to visit within the pages of this book all the points along that boundary, for doing so should be a work in progress. All we can hope to do here is focus on some of the most signal instances where Network Centrism appears to have exceeded its authority, and use those instances as clues for where the boundary lies.
Fortunately, these signposts along the boundary have already been sighted at Chapter 6 where we discussed the destructive consequences of Network Centrism; they represent the points where information technology, having escaped the controlling confines of that boundary, went astray. As the reader may recall, we have found at least three instances of possible escape, instances where the reach for technological supremacy counseled by the proponents of Network Centrism would have had us skip over the enemy, ignore the dynamics of war, and underestimate the central role that humans play in war. These things which Network Centrism tends to ignore represent deniable assumption that Network Centric doctrine makes about war and will therefore turn out to be the very things that limit its applicability.
Appropriate incorporation of the enemy, of the dynamics of warfare, and of the human dimension of war, into the debate about the military utility of information technology will influence each and every one of the four qualities of a war machine. We could therefore use any and all of the four qualities of a war machine to demonstrate what limits Network Centrism. However, for the sake of simplicity, we shall use nimbleness to discuss the limiting effect of enemy deception, use power to kill to discuss the limiting effect of the dynamics of evasion, and use cohesion to discuss the limiting effect of both human individuality and human proficiency. In all these cases, we shall use the techniques of systems analysis to understand how the qualities of the war machine are limited by the considerations made above. This will give us an opportunity to apply the general theory described in Chapter 3 and thereby illustrate how systems analysis illuminates the understanding gained during the debate about technology.