9 NETWORK CENTRISM CHASTENED
We are now finally in a position to put together the various signposts discussed in the previous chapter and thus contemplate the complete outlines of the boundary that constrains information technology. This boundary instructs that the military utility of information technology is limited by a number of deniable assumptions, each of which must be explicitly considered during the acquisition debate. In what follows, we shall use the analysis completed in the previous chapter to gain an understanding of what a properly chastened Network Centrism, constrained to live within its natural boundaries, might look like.
The basic idea is to identify, for each deniable assumption which would limit the productivity of newly acquired information technology, ways in which we can increase the probability that those deniable assumptions will not in fact be denied, and then to insist that Network Centrism bring along the strategies, tactics, and technologies which would increase that probability, or be rejected out of hand.
As we have seen, the deniable assumptions of Network Centrism concern the simple, but often forgotten fact that war is a real contest between an unpredictable enemy and an imperfect self, not some mathematical exercise between stereotyped forces to be consumed inside a computer. Consequently, they tend to congregate into two distinct categories, assumptions that have to do with underestimating our enemy, and assumptions that have to do with overestimating ourselves.