The future of warfare

Ray Kirzweil was recently interviewed about his thoughts on the future of warfare.  He had some interesting insights:

Wars of conquest or permanent
occupation seem increasingly unlikely. Granting that technology will
change, what will wars themselves be about?



… a key struggle will be against
fundamentalism, against groups animated by a desire to keep things the
way they are, or were. These struggles will tend not to be classical
struggles between nation states.

Does new technology, and in
particular the ‘singularity’ that you have identified in its rate of
change, make war more or less likely?



I
think classical wars will occur less often. Decentralized communication
such as the Internet is inherently a democratizing force, and has been
behind the move towards greater democracy in the world. Although not a
perfect system, democracies tend not to fight wars against each other.
Future conflicts will tend to be with smaller groups who will try to
amplify their impact by finding vulnerabilities in our technological
infrastructure.

Full article here