Blue Horizons IV

Deterrence in the Age of Surprise

by

John P. Geis II, PhD, Colonel, USAF, Retired

 Grant T. Hammond, PhD

Harry A. Foster

Theodore C. Hailes, Colonel, USAF, Retired

The Occasional Papers series was established by the Center for Strategy 

and Technology as a forum for research on topics that reflect long-term 

strategic thinking about technology and its implications for US national 

security. Copies of no. 70 in this series are available from the Center for 

Strategy and Technology, Air War College, 325 Chennault Circle, Maxwell 

AFB, Alabama 36112, or on the CSAT website at http://csat.au.af.mil/. The 

fax number is (334) 953-6158; phone (334) 953-6150. 

Occasional Paper No. 70

Center for Strategy and Technology

Air University

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112
ii

Project Editor

Dr. Ernest Rockwell

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Geis, John P.

Blue horizons IV : deterrence in the age of surprise / by John P. Geis II, PhD, Colonel, USAF, Retired ; 

Grant T. Hammond, PhD ; Harry A. Foster.

pages cm. – (Occasional paper ; no. 70)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58566-231-9 (alk. paper)

1. United States. Air Force—Operational readiness. 

2. United States. Air Force—Organization. 3. Cyberterrorism—Prevention. 4. Biological warfare—Prevention. 5. Deterrence (Strategy) I. Title. II. Title: 

Deterrence in the age of surprise. 

UG633.G45 2013

358.4’030973—dc23

2013046547

Published by Air University Press in January 2014

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this academic research paper 

are those of the authors and do not reflect the official 

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or the Department of Defense. In accordance with Air 

Force Instruction 51-303, Intellectual Property—Patents, 

Patent Related Matters, Trademarks and Copyrights, it is 

not copyrighted but is the property of the US government.

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iii

Contents

Chapter Page

About the Authors v

Abstract vii

Preface xi

1 Introduction 1

2 Threats in the Age of Surprise 11

3 A Structural Model of Deterrence 27

4 The Delphi Study and Results 33

5 Findings and Implications for the US Air Force 39

6 A Global Vigilance Strategy for 2035 47

7 Summary 51

Abbreviations 53

Bibliography 55

Illustrations

Figure Page

1 Research team composition by specialty 2

2 Study design—matrix of technologies versus actors 2

3 Number of transistors per microprocessor 4

4 The J-Curve and exponential change 5

5 Warfare is changing 7

6 Impact of a May 1921–class solar flare on US electric grid 19

7 Spyder Arctic III Blue Laser 20

8 A structural model of deterrence theory 27

9 The deterrence equation 28

10 Difficulty of deterrence: Delphi results 33
iv

Figure Page

11 Difficulty of attribution: Delphi results 34

12 Likelihood of catastophic attack: Delphi results 36

13 Delphi study threat data in 3-D 36

14 How transparency operates 41

15 Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, on 17 September 2009 43
v

About the Authors

Col John P. Geis II, PhD, USAF, retired, is a professor at the Air Force 

Research Institute and the former director of the Air Force Center for Strategy 

and Technology (CSAT) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He retired from the service in 2011 after more than 27 years in uniform. Dr. Geis has served as an 

instructor, weapons systems officer, navigator, and fire control officer on 

such aircraft as the F-111A, F-111E, T-37, AT-38B, T43, and AC-130H. Operationally, he served as a planner for Operation Eldorado Canyon, flew 

combat missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and commanded the joint and 

combined special operations task force that replaced the USS Independence

Carrier Battle Group on the Korean Peninsula. In 1996 Colonel Geis coauthored the Alternate Futures Monograph for the chief of staff–directed Air 

Force 2025 study. Shortly thereafter, he served as chief, Strategic Planning, 

Doctrine, and Force Integration Branch at Headquarters Air Force Special 

Operations Command, leading all long-range planning, doctrine development, and joint force integration for all Air Force special forces. Dr. Geis is a 

graduate of the Air War College. He is the author or editor of nearly two 

dozen Air University Press books and monographs. Dr. Geis has a bachelor 

of science degree in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin, a master’s 

degree in political science from Auburn University, a master’s degree in 

strategic studies from the Air War College, and both a master of arts and a 

doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Grant T. Hammond is a deputy director of the USAF Center for 

Strategy and Technology (CSAT) and a professor of international security 

at the Air War College. Dr. Hammond received his bachelor of arts from 

Harvard and a master of arts and doctorate from the School of Advanced 

International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to coming to 

the Air War College, Dr. Hammond was chairman of the International 

Studies Department at Rhodes College and executive officer at the Center 

for International Affairs at Harvard University. He left CSAT and the Air 

War College in 2007 to be dean and deputy commandant of the NATO 

Defense College in Rome, Italy, returning to CSAT in late 2010. Dr. Hammond 

has written three books—Countertrade Offsets and Barter in International 

Political Economy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Plowshares into 

Swords: Arms Races in International Politics, 1840–1991 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993); and The Mind of War: John Boyd and 

American Security (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

2001)—and has authored numerous book chapters, articles, and briefings. 

He has addressed all of the US armed services command and staff colleges 

and war colleges as well as military and civilian audiences in Belgium, 

Germany, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, 

Sweden, and the United Kingdom. 
vi

Harry A. Foster is a deputy director of the Center for Strategy and 

Technology. Prior to joining CSAT, he served as the chief of strategy for US 

Air Forces Central Command at Al Udeid AB, Qatar. While a student at 

the Air War College at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, in 2008, he coauthored the 

executive summaries for two USAF Blue Horizons studies. A combatexperienced instructor pilot in three aircraft (F-16, B-2, and B-1), he has 

commanded an operations support squadron and served in the Air Staff ’s 

Checkmate Division. He holds graduate degrees from Marine Command 

and Staff College at Quantico, Virginia, where he was a distinguished graduate; 

the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, 

Alabama; the Harvard Kennedy School at Cambridge, Massachusetts; and 

the Air War College, where he graduated with highest distinction.

Col Theodore C. Hailes, USAF, retired, is the Force Transformation 

Chair at Air University and a founding member of the Center for Strategy 

and Technology. In addition to his work in technology, he is also on the 

faculty of the Air War College, teaching courses on national security decision making, international security studies, and regional studies field 

seminars. He retired from the Air Force in 1996, completing a 30-year 

tour. During that time he flew F-4, 0-2A, F-5, and F-15 aircraft, accumulating over 4,000 hours, of which 500 were in combat. He served in Vietnam 

as a forward air controller with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, 

and finished his fighter career as squadron commander of the 22 TFS and 

then as director of operations of the Northeast Air Defense Sector. He served 

in two staff tours: the Pentagon from 1979 to 1983, where he worked in 

international programs and was executive officer for AF/A8, and the Air 

War College from 1990 to 1996, where he was a department chairman and 

associate dean of faculty. He returned to the Air War College faculty in a 

civilian capacity in 1997 and has worked there since. His military educational background includes Squadron Office School (resident, 1972), Air 

Command and Staff College (seminar, 1981), and Air War College (resident, 1987). His civilian education includes a bachelor of arts in history 

from Denison University and a master of science in international relations 

from Troy University. His principal areas of interest in the academic world 

have been in international relations and the strategic implication of accelerating technological change. 
vii

Abstract

This study examines the implications of exponential technological 

change on the panoply of threats the US Air Force may have to face in the 

future and how the Air Force should posture itself to best deter those 

threats. Specifically, this study

•  examines the changes in the array of threats for which deterrence will

be needed in the future, due to the proliferation of disruptive technologies;

•  explores the relevance of deterrence theory to both existing and new

threats, some of which may surpass nuclear weapons in the risk they 

pose to both the United States and humankind; and 

•  recommends new ways of applying deterrence theory in order to reduce the risk that new disruptive technologies will be used against the 

United States or its interests.

Building on previous Blue Horizons studies, this work assumes that science 

and technology growth will continue and will drive proliferation of advanced 

and potentially dangerous technologies. It posits that the result of rapid 

advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, directed energy, space, computers, and communications technologies may prove to be particularly dangerous. These developments span the private sector and many nations.1

Globalization in finance, communications, education, industry, trade, 

governance, and myriad other areas is facilitating the rapid spread of new 

technologies among nations, groups, and individuals.2

 Actors in unstable 

states and terrorists may use these technologies in malevolent ways to directly threaten US national security and that of friends and allies. This 

threat will take the Air Force back to its roots, which began in intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance. 

Of principal concern by the year 2035 are threats in six separate areas: 

nuclear weapons, attacks in cyberspace, directed energy weapons, space 

systems, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Each of these poses the risk of 

catastrophic attack to the United States, its citizens, and its infrastructure. 

Deterring threats posed by nations, groups, and individuals will require 

new thinking regarding the application of deterrence theory. Fundamentally, deterrence theory suggests that actors are deterred from attacking a 

target if they believe that the risk or cost of retribution outweighs the gains 

to be achieved by carrying out the attack. As such, deterrence theory has 

always contained two primary branches. One is deterrence by retribution—

the cost one can impose on the attacker for either carrying out an attack or 

making the attempt to do so. The other is deterrence by denial—the ability 

to deny an adversary the opportunity to attack or having sufficient resiliency that little is to be gained even if the attack is successful. Each of these 
viii

branches can affect the deterrence calculus. This study examines the interplay among the six technology threat areas and how deterrence theory applies. 

Historically, deterrence theory as it applies to nuclear weaponry has relied almost exclusively on deterrence by retribution. This was necessary, as 

by treaty each side in the Cold War had more weapons than the other had 

interceptors to protect from those weapons. The result was an implicit assumption that avoiding a devastating attack was impossible. As a result, 

deterrence with respect to nuclear weapons has historically relied on a 

credible threat of a massive retaliatory response, the costs of which would 

be so great—outweighing the gains to be won—that no rational adversary 

would ever initiate such an attack. This philosophy was known as mutually 

assured destruction. However, this historical thinking focuses on only onehalf of the deterrence equation, and this is inappropriate in dealing with 

the newer threats.

This study finds that deterrence by denial has significant leverage in relation to the newly emerging technological threats. Unlike nuclear weapons, 

it is possible to deny an adversary the capability, opportunity, and the ability 

to create significant effects using most new technologies if the appropriate 

steps are taken in advance. In short, it is possible to significantly mitigate 

the gains to be achieved by attacking and thus change the deterrent calculus 

in the mind of a prospective adversary. As a result, deterrence by denial 

now needs to be considered as an integral part of deterrence strategy by the 

United States and, by extension, its Air Force. 

Scope of the Study

Entitled Deterrence in the Age of Surprise, this study examines the impact 

of exponential technological change on potentially catastrophic threats to 

the United States and its interests and makes recommendations on how the 

Air Force should best posture itself to aid the United States in deterring 

these new threats. This study’s research team, with more than 650 years of 

combined airpower and military experience, examined the context of the 

future strategic environment and researched threats across six technology 

areas in-depth: nuclear weapons, biotechnology, nanotechnology, directed 

energy technologies, space systems, and cyberspace systems. They evaluated the nature and extent of the potential threats posed in each of these 

areas and examined the relevance and application of existing deterrence 

theory to these new threats. From this analysis of deterrence theory, the 

study makes policy recommendations that will enhance the likelihood that 

the United States will be able to deter future attacks across this wide range 

of technologies from nation-states, groups, and individuals. 

This study employs the Delphi study method pioneered by RAND, 

highlighting the real dangers posed by adversary nations, groups, and individuals possessing advanced technologies. It concludes that groups and 

viii
ix

individuals will continue to gain access to new capabilities and technologies 

that once were considered the exclusive domain of nation-states. These 

technologies will enable these groups to overcome the tyranny of distance 

and make it easier to discover, act, surprise, and target almost any place on 

Earth. The study concludes that deterrence of individuals will be more difficult than that of groups or nation-states but that with the most dangerous 

of new technologies, the greatest likelihood of catastrophic attack is likely 

to be posed by groups. It reconfirms that more than three-fourths of all 

technology research and development is now conducted outside the United 

States, making it increasingly difficult for the Department of Defense to 

control technology proliferation. 

Conclusions

The chapters that follow detail the data, findings, analysis, and conclusions of the research team. Vetted by senior scientists from the national 

laboratories and the Air Force Research Laboratory, the contents have been 

peer-reviewed by technical experts around the world. Based on an indepth analysis of the six major technology areas, the research team reached 

the following conclusions and makes the following recommendations.

National critical infrastructure is vulnerable to attack in space (communications) via cyberspace and directed energy weapons. This holds the potential to cause permanent damage to parts of the infrastructure, rendering 

it inoperative for periods ranging from months to years. Additional efforts 

to guard this infrastructure are required.

While nanotechnology is often thought of as a technology that makes all 

other things better, it holds the promise and threat of being able to pack large 

amounts of energy into small spaces. From a battery or space-lift perspective, 

it offers the ability to solve some of our most important technological challenges. From a weapons perspective, it may enable the miniaturization of 

bombs that can destroy civilian airliners. This poses risks to the nation’s 

transportation infrastructure, upon which all commerce depends. 

Nuclear weapons are unlikely to disappear in the next 20–30 years, and 

proliferation is likely to continue. In addition to the current nine nuclear 

states, others, particularly Iran, appear interested in acquiring this technology. 

Ensuring that weapons remain under the control of the governments that 

created them will be a key challenge in the future. 

The most dangerous technology is nano-enabled biotechnology. While 

the nexus of these two sciences has already produced extremely effective 

medicines for certain types of cancer and will likely cure other diseases in 

time, the same technologies that can cure disease can also be perverted to 

cause it. With the “Rosetta Stone” for the human genome only a handful of 

years away, the world is entering an era when it is possible to design a 
x

perfectly lethal virus for which no immunity exists. By 2030 this capability 

could reside in the hands of a master’s degree holder in microbiology. 

Deterring nation-states, groups, and individuals from using these technologies in ways that would cause catastrophic harm to society is of national 

importance. While it is more than merely an Air Force problem, the Air 

Force has a major role to play in providing the nation the necessary capabilities to make successful deterrence more likely.

The Air Force’s roots began with observers in balloons overlooking battle 

lines in World War I, conducting surveillance and reconnaissance of the 

adversary, and using this information to guide military operations on the 

ground below. This same fundamental core competency, now called “information superiority,” is able to monitor potential adversaries, attribute their 

activities, and strike them as needed. This is extremely important in successfully deterring an adversary strike. As it did in the two world wars, the 

Air Force must again pioneer new methods of conducting intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance of our adversaries, making certain that 

they know that no attack will go unnoticed, unattributed, or undetected. 

Secondly, the Air Force needs to make itself more resilient in the face of 

potential adversary attack. In a process this study refers to as immunization, the Air Force needs to assess the risks it is currently taking in relation 

to these new technology threats regarding its interdependence with other 

services and the national critical infrastructure for key functions. Once 

these risks are mapped, research and development will be required to mitigate 

the risks to make the Air Force and, by extension, the United States less 

vulnerable to an adversary attack.

The study concludes that if the United States can make it more likely that 

an adversary will be accurately attributed (ideally before an attack is 

launched) and can make it less likely that significant damage would occur 

in such an attack due to greater system resiliency, then adversaries will find 

launching an attack a risky option with little payoff. In short, they are more 

likely to be deterred. By increasing the likelihood that future adversaries 

will find themselves deterred, this will decrease the likelihood that such an 

attack would ever take place. Greater detail on what these threats are, how 

they could be implemented, and what steps the Air Force can take to begin 

the process of readying itself for the future is contained in the pages that follow.
xi

Preface

In 1996 the Air Force initiated a major study under the direction of Gen 

Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force chief of staff (CSAF). That study, Air Force 

2025, looked 30 years into the future and made enormous contributions 

toward directing Air Force research and procurement.

In 2007 Gen T. Michael Mosley, CSAF, directed that a continuous series 

of future-oriented study efforts be undertaken, using Air University (AU) 

as the “Air Force’s think tank.” This study, Blue Horizons, was commissioned by the CSAF to provide “a new look at the future.” Specifically, the 

CSAF asked the research team to provide “a common understanding of 

future strategic and technological trends for Air Force leaders to make better 

decisions.” The chief also sought to “confirm AU as [the Air Force’s] in-house 

think tank” and to improve the relevance of Air Force education to the 

decision-making processes in Washington, DC.3

Under the leadership of the Center for Strategy and Technology, a team 

of 46 officers from the Air Force and the sister services participated in the 

study during their one-year master’s degree professional military education 

program. They examined the question “How should the Air Force best 

posture itself to deter threats by traditional and new weapons of mass destruction or disruption with an eye toward the mid-2030s?” 

The authors collectively led the effort and spent the year researching and 

traveling to identify the range of challenges posed by accelerating exponential 

technological change and how these changes will modify the types of 

weapons that may have catastrophic effects in the next 20–30 years. They 

then examined deterrence theory to determine if this theory would still 

apply to the new weapons types. In this study, the authors recommend a 

new way to apply deterrence theory to counter the wide range of threats 

that could significantly damage the United States and its interests in the 

years to come.

Notes

1. T. Michael Moseley and the Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology, Blue Horizons 

2007: Horizons 21 Project Report (Washington, DC: Headquarters US Air Force, 2008).

2. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005).

3. Gen John D. W. Corley, vice chief of staff, United States Air Force, “Strategic Studies 

(Blue Horizons) Special Interest Item,” memorandum, 17 May 2006.

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

This study is the fourth in the Blue Horizons series. This series explores 

topics of interest to the chief of staff and senior leadership of the Air Force 

and recommends solutions to strategic challenges created by emerging 

technologies. 

In the spring of 2009, the Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology 

(CSAT) began discussions with the Air Staff regarding the findings of the 

first two Blue Horizons studies.1

 In these discussions, then–Lt Gen Raymond 

Johns, the deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, raised concerns 

that a new examination of how deterrence would operate in the future was 

necessary. The topic of study for 2010 was derived from these discussions 

and the memoranda that followed. 

This study examines the question “How should the Air Force best posture 

itself to assist the nation in deterring nation-states, groups, and individuals 

from attacking the United States in space or cyberspace, or by using nuclear, 

nanotechnological, biotechnological, or directed energy weapons from 

now to the year 2035?” This monograph discusses what has become known 

as “the future deterrence study” inside the Air Force, including the methods 

of examination used, the findings surrounding these emerging technologies, and the conclusions as to how the Air Force best postures itself to 

deter the “threats of the responsibly imaginable.”2

Methodology

The Blue Horizons IV study draws upon extensive background research; 

site visits to the US Air Force and National Laboratories; interviews with 

scientists, researchers, policy analysts, senior officials in agencies across 

the “whole of government”; and engineers building the technologies that 

will help shape the future strategic environment.3

 The team of 35 researchers 

and five faculty members from two colleges began with a search across science 

and technology, education and training, governmental policy, organizational 

culture, national strategies, and military studies literatures.4

 The research 

team was deliberately selected for its breadth of expertise across all relevant 

military specialties. The team composition is represented in figure 1. 

These researchers visited three of the major national laboratories.5

 In 

addition the team visited seven of the 10 Air Force Research Laboratory 

directorates, including Space Vehicles, Directed Energy, Materials Sciences, 

Human Factors Engineering, Propulsion, Air Vehicles, and Sensors. In 

each, senior scientists made presentations, and the researchers had time to 

discuss and interview these scientists regarding current projects, including 

those that were in the conceptualization stages. This research helped define 
2

the range of technologies likely to be available in the field in the 2030–35 

time frame for which this study was commissioned. 

Support Logistics

Intel

Acq/S&T

Training

Medical

Space Ops

Air Ops

Cyber Ops

Figure 1. Research team composition by specialty

Once equipped with this understanding of the future threat environment, the research team embarked on research specific to the technological 

threat across six technology areas and across three types of actors. Specifically, the team examined nanotechnology, nuclear weapons, directed energy 

technologies, space systems, cyberspace as a domain and as a set of systems, 

and biotechnology. The team researched these six technological areas as 

they pertained to potential threats from three actor types: nation-states, 

groups, and individuals. This created a matrix of 18 squares that required 

detailed examination (fig. 2). Two of the 18 boxes were eliminated early in 

the study. Nuclear weapon threats from single individuals were ruled implausible on two grounds. First, it is improbable for a single person to produce such 

a weapon. Similarly, space attack by a single individual was deemed unlikely in the study time frame, as the team concluded that the infrastructure and materials needed to successfully carry out such an attack would 

exceed the capacity of a single individual. 

Nation

Category Nano Nuclear DE Space Cyber Bio

Group

Individual

Figure 2. Study design—matrix of technologies versus actors
3

The team, initially divided into subgroups to conduct the specific research above, was later recombined to conduct a more holistic look at the 

challenges presented across the matrix. The team built a structural model 

of deterrence and then embarked on a formal Delphi study, followed by an 

informal version of the Delphi method to evaluate risks and opportunities 

to deter across the various boxes of the matrix.6

 The formal Delphi study 

lasted three rounds before convergence was found on the values and the 

Delphi study was terminated. The informal Delphi discussions took place 

across five rounds of approximately three hours duration each. The former 

generated 3,528 data points for quantitative analysis; the latter helped add 

a qualitative understanding to the meaning. 

In the end, the team concluded that the greatest future risks lie not in the 

area of nuclear weapons, though threats there do remain, but rather in areas 

of biotechnology and cyberspace. The team also found that while the body 

of literature on deterrence theory remains valid for future threats, the areas 

of focus to put the theory into practice will change in the years ahead.

Overview

This paper begins with a discussion of conclusions reached in previous 

Blue Horizons studies that are applicable to deterring threats emanating 

from new and emerging technologies. Here, the paper briefly discusses the 

rapidly changing nature of technology, its proliferation, and the developmental challenges associated with having only a small percentage of global 

research and development within the nation’s military portfolio. It then 

delves into the nature of the threats across the six technological areas that 

CSAT was asked to examine. The paper discusses the types of attacks that 

will be possible over the next 20 years and what the effects could be upon 

the national critical infrastructure and the population; furthermore, it enables 

the reader to understand the breadth and depth of the challenges faced. 

The paper then introduces a structural model of deterrence. Based on 

the writings of many of the preeminent deterrence theorists of the past 60 

years, this model dissects the concept of deterrence into its component 

parts and offers a useful analytic tool to determine how best to address 

each of the threats discussed. Through the lens of Air Force history, the 

paper recommends two main areas of emphasis for the Air Force as that 

service seeks to better posture itself to deter threats across these technological realms or domains. It concludes with a specific set of recommendations that were presented to the Air Force chief of staff, while highlighting 

a few areas where further research or actions are required. While the Air 

Force can make a major difference, it is not the only agency that has a role 

in this process, and action by other governmental agencies is also required 

to create an optimum deterrent posture. Thus, the conclusion of the paper 
4

also addresses issues that other departments must attend to in order to aid 

successful deterrence initiatives.

Background

In the first year of the Blue Horizons program, entitled Horizons 21, CSAT 

examined a broad range of emerging technologies. The researchers found that 

advancements were happening across the entire range of sciences at an exponential rate. They concluded then that the capabilities available to actors in the 

international arena will continue to expand at an ever-increasing rate. Driven 

by motives of profit, social pressures for ever-more-capable goods, as well as 

scientific curiosity and military necessity, continued exponential technological 

change is real and inevitable. 

1E+10

1E+09

100,000,000

10,000,000

1,000,000

100,000

10,000

1,000

100

10

1

1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006

Number of Transistors per Microprocessor

Figure 3. Number of transistors per microprocessor. Graph compiled by authors using data from Intel Corporation. (Intel Corporation, “The Evolution of a Revolution,” Intel 

Developer Forum, n.d., accessed 17 December 2012, http://download.intel.com/press

room/kits/IntelProcessorHistory.pdf.)

One of the principal early findings, validated in earlier studies, is that many 

of the key technologies that will require deterrence in the future continue to 

evolve at an exponential rate. The research team again discovered what is often 

called the “J Curve.” Figure 3 shows the number of transistors per microprocessor on a base 10 logarithmic graph. Each horizontal line represents a 

10-fold increase over the line below. On this graph, technological change 

looks like a straight line. When this or similar technologies are plotted on 

linear axes, as in figure 4, the curve takes on the appearance of the letter “J,” 

from which this curve gets its name. As with the number of transistors on a 
5

microprocessor and the number of Internet hosts, the team revalidated that 

information, biology, pulsed power, nanotechnology, and other technical 

sciences are all racing ahead at ever-increasing speeds. 

900,000,000

800,000,000

700,000,000

600,000,000

500,000,000

400,000,000

300,000,000

200,000,000

100,000,000

0 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Internet Hosts

Figure 4. The J-Curve and exponential change. Data from Internet Systems 

Consortium (Internet Systems Consortium, “Internet Host Count History,” n.d., accessed 17 November 2011, http://www.isc.org/solutions/survey/history.)

The rapidly changing nature of technology suggests that the world and 

the associated technological challenges it faces are changing in unprecedented ways.7

 It is not only the scope of technology change that is unprecedented but also its speed. This century will likely see 1,000 times the technological change of the last century, with each decade containing upwards 

of 70 times more technological development than occurred in the period 

from the dawn of time up until the year 2000.8

 This combination of great 

scope and speed of technological change means that the world of the 2030s 

will not merely be an extension of today. In many respects it will be fundamentally different. As a result, the greatest threats the world may face likewise represent a significant departure from past thinking. 

CSAT’s recent research also shows that the United States and its military 

have an ever-decreasing say in the types of technology being developed. 

Seventy percent of all research funding happens outside the United States. 

Further, even among the 30 percent that happens within US borders, 70 

percent of those technological developments are privately funded and are 

solutions or breakthroughs over which the military has no influence or 

sway.9

 Less than 4 percent of modern technological research is within the 

purview of the Department of Defense—a radical departure from 50 years 

ago, when that number was nearly 50 percent. 

Feeding this development is the collaboration enabled by the Internet. 

Specific CSAT research across a multiplicity of disciplines, including computing, alternative energy, nanotechnology, and cyberspace, continues to 
6

tell this same story. The scientific breakthroughs and technological applications are both increasingly civilian developed and commercially and globally 

distributed, and like the number of transistors on a single microprocessor 

chip (fig. 3), these advancements are continuing at an exponential rate.10

Moreover, the “half-life” of scientific secrets and their technological applications into militarily critical technologies are shrinking rapidly, and they 

are available to an ever-larger panoply of actors, both state and nonstate. 

The result as we look to the far future is that the technological dominance the United States has historically enjoyed may no longer be possible. 

By some measures of innovation, such as the number of major scientific 

articles published in peer-reviewed journals, China is already passing the 

United States. While the United States continues to enjoy the best laboratory 

infrastructure in the world, we are declining in our productivity as others 

are rapidly improving in their ability to innovate. We are in danger of losing 

the technological race, and our education systems across the United States 

are setting the nation up to lose even more profoundly in the future.11

In the words of Thomas Friedman, these forces are flattening our world. 

Technologies formerly in the hands of only the wealthy states are now being 

developed in what were once called “developing countries.”12 This has allowed groups and individuals to acquire advanced technologies that were 

once the purview only of nation-states. Now computer systems superior to 

the supercomputers of the 1980s reside in the cell phones of people living 

in developing countries.13 Based on a continuation of Moore’s law, computers 

in the next 30 years will become more than 1 billion times more powerful 

and less expensive than those of today.14 As a result of this flattening of our 

world and decreasing cost of technology, warfare is changing. 

Historically, wars of high consequence have been relatively rare—sometimes 

happening only once or twice per century. These were the wars where catastrophic damage could occur or the existence of a state or empire could be 

threatened. Conflicts with less serious results have been more frequent. In 

short, warfare has never strayed far from the orange line in figure 5. Today, 

however, the power once in the hands of states is diffusing to the individual, 

meaning that attacks and battles of high probability may soon also be 

events of high consequence. Worse, these conflicts may become more common. This would allow warfare to move into the upper-right quadrant of 

this strategic planning space—a place it has never been before. This means 

the future may be different from our past in significant ways. 

The number of actors who occupy this new space that may threaten the 

world is also changing. In 1980 the United Nations (UN) membership 

stood at 154 nation-states. At the time, these were the primary actors in the 

world. Today UN membership stands at 192, an increase of nearly 25 percent. In addition, the world has also seen a rise in groups, including nongovernmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and terrorist 

organizations, many of which are able to affect outcomes on at least a regional 
7

basis. One such group, al-Qaeda, started the longest war in US history. By 2008 

these groups numbered at least 13,425 and may have been as many as 

40,000.15 This represents a three-orders-of-magnitude jump in the number 

of salient actors.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Most probable becoming very dangerous

High

Low

Low Probability High

Importance

WMD

(Catastrophic)

Conventional

(Traditional)

Insurgency

(Irregular)

Terrorist

(Disruptive)

Individual

(Disruptive)

Spectrum

of Conflict

Figure 5. Warfare is changing. (T. Michael Moseley et al., Blue Horizons 2007: 

Horizons 21 Study Report [Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Center for Strategy and 

Technology, 2007], 21.)

As technology becomes even less expensive, as automation increases, 

and as the ability of single individuals to create major effects is enhanced, 

the number of actors will grow still further. We are in a world where computers can pass the Turing test, meaning that they can not only assist individuals in carrying out tasks but also carry out these tasks by themselves.16

As machines empower individuals and potentially even become capable of 

creating significant impacts on society themselves, the number of potential 

actors undergoes yet another quantum increase. By this measure, the world 

of 2030 has not hundreds of actors or even tens of thousands. It will have 

billions. The human race is likely to number between 8 and 9 billion by 

2035, and this number itself may pale in comparison to the number of autonomous machines that may be roaming the planet by that time.17 In 

short, the number of actors capable of making a major impact on the world 

stage will increase by another five or six orders of magnitude in the next 30 

years—nearly a 100,000-fold increase. Today, we refer to the threats we face 

as “hybrid.” Whatever this future threat is, and there may be no good name 

for it, it is vastly more complex than anything experienced to date.

The cause of the increase in the number of potential actors and of their 

increased potential capability is illustrated in economic theory. Matt Ridley 

argues that the rapid evolution of human capabilities represents a significant research puzzle, as no other species has managed to adapt and conquer its environment so completely or quickly. As recently as 45,000 years 
8

ago—a blink of an eye in Darwinian evolutionary time—humans were 

mostly cave-dwelling, solitary creatures. The discovery and rapid adoption 

of early tools enabled man to live off the land and provided an incentive for 

larger communities to form. It also enabled specialization, as the tools 

enabled farmers to produce enough food for the community, allowing others 

to specialize in making improved tools or other crafts. Even in this nascent 

stage of civilization, living together fostered knowledge sharing, causing 

technology to increase exponentially. Over time, this has led to the increased specialization of employment and the growth of these early communities into the megacities in which many of us live. The critical point 

made is that the concentration of people escalated the interplay of knowledge 

that leads to increasing innovation. Ridley argues that the advent of the 

Internet is exponentially increasing the rate of innovation and now allows 

information sharing on a planetary scale, which will continue to increase 

our inventiveness as a species, produce wealth, and result in continued cultural change. In short, the story of the advancement of humanity is the 

spread of specialization and exchange, with our prosperity being derived 

from becoming more narrow in what we make and more diverse in what 

we purchase.18

Ridley is an economist, and from an economic perspective this argument is a story of good news. From the standpoint of biology, however, it 

has a darker side. As innovation increases at an exponential rate, our ability 

to contain and control new concepts and technology is threatened.19 It 

would be an act of hubris to believe that we humans are somehow immune 

from this outcome.

Notes

1. T. Michael Moseley et al., Blue Horizons 2007: Horizons 21 Study Report (Maxwell 

AFB, AL: Air University Center for Strategy and Technology, 2007); and John P. Geis II et 

al., Blue Horizons II: Future Capabilities and Technologies for the Air Force in 2030 (Maxwell 

AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2009). 

2. This phrase is often used by Dennis Bushnell, the chief scientist of NASA’s Langley 

Research Center, to title some of his presentations. 

3. The Center for Strategy and Technology (CSAT) has collaborative research relationships 

with all 10 research directorates of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Sandia National 

Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and 

NASA. As needed, CSAT reaches out to scientists and engineers from industry, the academy, 

and additional laboratories to complete its research. Specific debts of gratitude are owed to the 

following individuals who contributed to this study and who were willing to be named: John 

Mearsheimer (University of Chicago); Robert Pape (University of Chicago); Jacek Kugler 

(Claremont Graduate University); Gen Mike Hayden, USAF, retired; Gen John Shaud, USAF, 

retired; Dennis Bushnell, NASA Langley Research Center; Peter S. Hamilton, Sandia National 

Laboratories; Larry A. Schoof, Sandia National Laboratories; Lt Col Joel Almosara, USAF; Col 

David P. Blanks, USAF; Lt Col Darren Buck, USAF; Lt Col Patrick C. Burke, USAF; Col 

Christopher Kinnan, USAF; Col Thomas Coglitore, USAF; Lt Col Miguel J. Colón, USAF; 

Cdr Peter R. Falk, US Navy; Col Michael Finn, USAF; Maj Gen Maury Forsyth, USAF; Lt Col 

John W. Gloystein, USAF; Col Christopher P. Hauth, USAF; Col William P. Jensen, USAF; 
9

Maj Gen Robert Kane, USAF; Mark J. Krause, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Lt 

Col Douglas J. Mellars, USAF; Lt Gen Allen Peck, USAF, retired; Col Stella T. Smith, USAF; 

Col Robert S. Spalding, USAF; Lt Col Michael J. Stephens, USAF; Lt Col Edward L. Vaughan, 

Air National Guard; and Col Ancel B. Yarbrough, USAF. Many others contributed but were 

too modest to let us list them here. 

4. Neither this work nor any source used to compile this work is classified or draws 

upon classified material. 

5. The majority of researchers visited Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New 

Mexico, and Los Alamos National Laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The faculty 

advisors and principal authors also visited with scientists and researchers at Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratories in Livermore, California.

6. Norman Dalkey and Olaf Helmer, “An Experimental Application of the Delphi Method 

to the Use of Experts,” Management Science 9, no. 3 (April 1963): 458–67. Dalkey and Helmer 

discuss the method in depth, as well as its origins in RAND’s Project Delphi. In this case the 

formal Delphi method was used as described in Dalkey and Helmer. This study then used an 

informal variant of the Delphi method to see if the results were robust to multiple 

methodological approaches. For more on this method, see Harold A. Linstone and Murray 

Turoff, The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications (University Heights: New Jersey 

Institute of Technology, 2002).

7. John L. Petersen, “Punctuations,” FUTUREdition 15, no. 8 (30 April 2012), http://

www.arlingtoninstitute.org/fe-archive-volume-15-number-8. Petersen’s article will be published 

as the foreword in Finley Eversole, ed., Infinite Energy Technologies (Rochester, VT: Inner 

Traditions, 2012). 

8. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 10–50. 

9. Moseley, Blue Horizons 2007. These numbers have not changed much since 2007, as 

verified in a 2012 study by Battelle Corporation. See Martin Grueber et al., “2012 Global 

R&D Funding Forecast,” R&D Magazine, 16 December 2011, http://www.rdmag.com

/articles/2011/12/2012-global-r-d-funding-forecast. Grueber and company point out that 

US research and development spending will top $420 billion but that only $128 billion will 

be driven by the government—a total of 29 percent. The United States continues to hold 

about 30 percent of the global research and development share.

10. Among the examples of this research conducted recently are Christopher Coates, 

The Air Force in SILICO: Computational Biology in 2025 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Center for 

Strategy and Technology, Air War College, 2007); Shane Courville, Air Force and the 

Cyberpsace Mission: Defending the Air Force’s Computer Network in the Future (Maxwell 

AFB, AL: Center for Strategy and Technology, Air War College, 2007); Mark S. Danigole, 

Biofuels: An Alternative to U.S. Petroleum Dependency (Maxwell AFB, AL: Center for 

Strategy and Technology, Air War College, 2007); and Vincent T. Jovene, Next Generation 

Nanotechnology Assembly Fabrication Methods: A Technology Forecast (Maxwell AFB, AL: 

Center for Strategy and Technology, Air War College, 2008).

11. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The United 

States ranks last among OECD countries in reading and is 27th in math (between Russia 

and Portugal) and 22nd in science (between Iceland and the Slovak Republic). 

12. See chapter 2, “The Ten Forces That Flattened the World,” in Thomas L. Friedman, 

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 

2007), 51–199.

13. Michio Kaku, The Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and 

Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 21.

14. Moore’s law posits that computer processor capabilities will double every 18 months. 

This yields 20 doublings in a 30-year period or an approximate 1.048-million-fold increase. 

15. Estimates of the numbers of these groups vary widely. The lowest estimate the 

authors encountered in their research was 13,425, which is cited by the United Nations. 
10

Mainstream estimates are in the range of a few tens of thousands, with some upper-end 

estimates around 60,000. For more data, see The United Nations Today (New York: United 

Nations Department of Public Information, 2008). See also Helmut Anheier, Marlies 

Glasius, and Mary Kaldor, “Introducing Global Civil Society,” Global Civil Society Yearbook 

2001 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2–38. 

16. Two computers have already successfully passed a version of the Turing test wherein 

a computer mimics human behavior so closely that in a blind test observers cannot discern 

which actor in a lineup is the computer. The first such event was in 2008, when Elbot, a chat 

bot designed by Fred Roberts, successfully convinced two judges out of three after a fiveminute interview that it was a human. Elbot won the Loebner Prize that year. Alan M. 

Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical 

and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer, ed. Robert Epstein, Gary 

Roberts, and Grace Beber (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2009), 23–66. The other such 

computer is Watson. See Ray Kurzweil, “The Significance of Watson,” Kurzweil Accelerating 

Intelligence (blog), 13 February 2011, http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-significance-of-watson. 

It is worth noting that Kurzweil believes that the Loebner threshold for passing the Turing 

test is too low but that genuine human intelligence will be reached by 2029. 

17. US Census Bureau, US Department of Commerce, “U.S. & World Population 

Clocks,” accessed 12 May 2012, http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html. 

18. Matt Ridley, “Humans: Why They Triumphed,” Wall Street Journal, 22 May 2010, 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html; and 

Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

19. A. Hallam and P. B. Wignall, Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath (Oxford, UK: 

Oxford University Press, 2002). Based on Hallam and Wignall’s calculations, the combined 

extinction loss from the five major extinction events (End-Ordovician [84 percent], Late 

Devonian [83 percent], End Permian [95 percent], End Triassic [80 percent], and End 

Cretaceous [76 percent]) would be 99.994 percent. This figure does not include the 

background extinction rate of those species that died out between these events, which 

would raise this figure still higher. 
11

Chapter 2

Threats in the Age of Surprise

As a result of this increasing speed of interaction and data sharing, we 

have entered an “age of surprise.” While it is possible to see the broad outlines of the future and to define the strategic planning space, this speed of 

change is making the specific details harder to see.1

 Whether we call these 

details “turbulence” or a form of chaos in complex systems, we have entered 

a period of inevitable surprises. We can discern the outlines of some in 

advance.2

 The key is to understand some of these potential surprises and 

know how to deal with the resultant challenges.

Cyberspace

Much of the critical infrastructure in the United States is dependent on 

cyberspace. To research exactly how vulnerable this infrastructure is, the 

Department of Energy created a National Critical Infrastructure Test 

Range as part of the Idaho National Laboratories. In 2007 a test of the robustness of our electrical grids against cyber attacks was first conducted on 

the lab’s 860-square-mile test range.3

 Dubbed “Aurora,” the attack simulated a single cyber attacker tapping into a supervisory control and data 

acquisition (SCADA) system controlling an electrical power generator 

similar to those used in the power plants across the United States. The 

result of the attack was a loss of control of systems critical to generator 

operation, which caused the generator to be destroyed.4

It is important to note that large electrical-generation components like 

the generator in the Aurora test are typically custom manufactured. Utility 

companies often have spare wire on hand, but spare generators are rare. 

The usual time to receive a new generator from the time the order is placed 

is around 18 months, assuming, of course, that the plant that manufactures 

them has electricity in the first place. In a large cyber attack, this assumption may be invalid.

This demonstration is disturbing on three grounds. First, it is not unique. 

Several instances of system malfunctions, arguably because of hacking into 

these types of systems, have already occurred and have caused damage to various 

infrastructures. Second, the US Air Force is heavily reliant on the national 

critical infrastructure, and if it were to incur a massive failure, it is highly likely 

the Air Force would be unable to carry out its principal core functions. Lastly, 

very little has been or is being done to mitigate this problem. 

There have been several attacks on critical infrastructure worldwide, 

many of which predated the Idaho test by years. Among those known to be 

intentional attacks on SCADA systems for the purpose of causing damage 

is an attack on the Maroochy Shire’s sewage treatment system in Queensland, 
12

Australia, in January 2000. During this attack, more than 264,000 gallons 

of sewage spilled over a period of several weeks, just after a new control 

system had been installed. Pumps were opening and closing without being 

commanded to do so. Only after months of investigation and 46 successful 

attacks was the source of the problem traced to a disgruntled employee 

who was trying to gain employment as the troubleshooter of misbehaving 

control systems.5

 In March 1997, a teenager managed to hack into the Bell 

Atlantic Computer and shut down the air traffic control system in and 

around Worcester, Massachusetts.6

 In addition, hacking attacks have disrupted natural gas pipelines in the former Soviet Union (1982) and Russia 

(2000). The 1982 event resulted in an explosion known as a “logic bomb.”7

There are other events that were also likely deliberate, as recent speculation 

regarding the Stuxnet and Flame malware programs suggests. It is important to realize that SCADA systems offer a path into the internal logic of 

the critical infrastructure; in fact, attacking these systems is easy enough 

that even a single hacker can accomplish it. 

The Air Force is dependent on these systems. If such outages are sporadic and/or localized, such inconveniences are easily overcome. If, however, the outage is part of a coordinated attack and if it affects the whole 

nation, then current planning is insufficient. A disabled national critical 

infrastructure affects not only electrical generation but also, over time, the 

systems that enable water transport, heating systems, sewage systems, and 

the financial and banking industries upon which modern economies depend. 

Distribution of foodstuffs, gasoline, and fresh water all require electricity at 

some stage, even if it is merely to distribute and pump the gasoline to 

power the trucks. Similarly, communications are electricity dependent. 

Without it, cell towers and landlines cannot operate. While most Air Force 

bases have means to recall their members even if there are no communications, the study team could find no one who could articulate how the Air 

Force would conduct a deployment without the ability to communicate 

from one base to another. 

The Air Force also depends on these systems to carry out missions other 

than deployment. Cyberspace is likely the future domain in which most 

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) will be conducted. The 

rapid increase in the number of cameras and pictures that are both geographically and chronologically referenced, combined with the current 

ability to fuse these images seamlessly together, will enable a new method 

of creating real-time, three-dimensional images of almost any major city 

on Earth.8

 As most of these pictures are available on the Internet, the ability 

to “play” these three-dimensional views back in time will enable the tracking of many activities of military significance back to their sources. In addition, cyberspace and the pictures that exist therein enable reconnaissance 

in ways impossible via either air or space. Office-space layouts, interior 

building configurations, and the locations of telephone junctions and circuit 
13

breaker boxes are all pieces of data that can be found in a picture on the 

Internet. These are pieces of data that one will never see from a satellite image.9

As a result, ISR in cyberspace may become the principal means of obtaining intelligence data in the future, making the survival of the national critical 

infrastructure even more important.

Perhaps most disturbing is the lack of a sense of urgency in addressing 

the problem. While research protocols require anonymity, CSAT has interviewed senior executives in several utility companies across the southeastern 

United States regarding the protective measures they are taking to stop 

potential cyberspace attacks. To a person, we received the same answer—

“nothing.” When we queried these leaders (chief executive officers and 

chief operating officers) as to why they were not taking action to protect 

their systems, the answer was also unanimous. Protective action costs 

money, and such money would have to come from shareholders’ dividends. 

In short the market incentives that currently exist are a powerful disincentive for leaders of the private companies to do anything to protect against 

the vulnerabilities that have long been known to exist. As a result, significant threats, not only of disruption but also of long-term destruction, exist 

and will likely remain for some time in cyberspace. 

Biotechnology

The second area where the threat is rapidly evolving is biotechnology. 

The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003.10 In this project, completed several years early, all the genes in human DNA were identified. 

Today, it is possible to get your finger pricked and have your genomic code 

printed out with all the As, Gs, Cs, and Ts. Such a printout would reach 

about 20 feet in height, and it would likely be meaningless both to you and 

to your doctor, but today it is possible.11 The step being worked on now is 

the “Rosetta stone” to those 20,000–25,000 genetic sequences—the part 

that determines how these genes produce the roughly 20,000 proteins that 

make each one of us a unique human being. This is called the Human 

Proteome Project, and it is well and truly under way.12

Once the project is completed, pharmaceutical companies will be able to 

use these data to develop cures for many, if not all, genetic diseases. Illnesses 

like cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and cancer may all be eradicated. 

Already today, some cancers, particularly those of the blood like leukemia, 

are being attacked by nanoengineered medicines based on an understanding of the ribonucleic acid structure of the underlying disease. Medicines 

like imatinib (Gleevec) and dasatinib (Sprycel) are able to bind with the 

leukemic blood molecules at a submolecular level and keep the leukemic 

molecules from reproducing.13 The result for many patients is a long life 

with the leukemia in remission. More such cures and treatments will follow in the years ahead.
14

Unfortunately, this same technology that may bring almost miraculous 

cures cuts both ways. Once the human genetic code is understood well 

enough to cure a genetic disease, it will also be understood well enough to 

engineer an illness for which no immunity can be found within the human 

genetic code. We are told by the leading scientists in our national laboratory system that by the year 2025, such capabilities will be resident in the 

hands of a well-trained microbiologist, whom they define as a master’s 

degree holder from a major university. Such an individual, with a lab costing as little as $100,000, would be able to engineer such a pathogen inside 

a one-car garage or a small basement. 

Lest this be thought of as only science fiction, such an event—though 

unintended and contained—has already occurred with mice. In 2000 Australian scientists were attempting to modify the mouse pox virus to produce 

interleukin-4 in the hopes of stimulating the production of viral antibodies. 

This experiment had two unexpected results.14 First, it failed to result in the 

production of the antibodies sought. Second, the resultant mouse pox 

strain had extraordinary lethality. Researchers awoke one morning to find 

every mouse in the laboratory dead, including mice immunized against the 

disease before the experiment began. The virus was 100 percent lethal, had 

overcome the immunity conferred by prior vaccination, and had spread to 

every mouse in the lab.15 Although this incident was an accident, deliberate 

genetic modifications to existing viruses could produce the same result in 

other species, including our own.

Nanotechnology

The field of nanotechnology offers three key advances as we move toward the future. The first is at the nexus of biotechnology and nanotechnology, largely discussed above. The second is in the creation of high-density 

energetic materials much more powerful than those developed to date. The 

third deals with the development of nanomaterials that will have specifically engineered properties, such as the ability to cause rapid corrosion, 

which could become a new class of weapons against systems and materiel.

The term nanotechnology is recent to science. Some reasonably recent 

versions of Webster’s dictionary do not even contain a definition for the 

word.16 Further, even within the discipline, there is some controversy over 

its meaning. Some have come to use nanotechnology to refer to any object 

or technology that is smaller than a micron (1,000 nanometers) in size. 

This misuse was partly an outgrowth of science fiction and partly of science 

still catching up to the concept.17 When this was added to the marketing 

aspects of being able to label anything made with a coating or substance 

that contains small parts as being “nanotechnology,” the environment became ripe for misuse of the term.
15

Here, nanotechnology refers to materials and substances that are constructed using processes to arrange particles of under 100 nanometers in 

size with submolecular precision, for which the important properties of the 

materials are governed largely by intermolecular (that is, van der Waals) 

forces.18 Technology that merely involves scaling existing micromechanical 

processes to submicron scale is “nanoscale technology.”

As indicated above, the first challenge with nanotechnology is the ability 

to precisely and deliberately create molecules of any design. As pharmaceutical companies are already demonstrating, once the genetic structure 

of a particular form of an illness is known, it is possible at the submolecular 

level to design medicines that can cure these diseases. As also mentioned 

above, once the human genome is successfully decoded and the Rosetta 

stone is built, well-trained microbiologists will have the capacity to engineer 

pathogens for which, even at the genetic level, the human system has no builtin immunity.19

The second area of concern for future attacks deals with the production 

of high-density materials using nanotechnology to precisely arrange 

molecular structures in a manner which optimizes explosive power. While 

modern explosives are several times more powerful than trinitrotoluene 

(TNT), future explosives may be much more powerful still. 

One of the principal limitations of modern explosives is the availability of 

oxygen at the time and place of detonation. This causes the explosive to do 

two things. First, some explosive molecules may not ignite due to the oxygendepleted environment and as such will reduce the total energy produced. 

Second, the explosive molecules that are not able to pair with the necessary 

oxygen immediately may still detonate but will do so after a short delay while 

they are waiting for additional oxygen molecules. This extends the duration 

of an explosion at the cost of reducing the initial blast effect. Using nanotechnology to pair oxygen atoms directly with the explosive atoms that require 

them would theoretically improve the efficiency of the explosive burn.20 This 

same process could be used to enhance the thrust produced by rocket fuels, 

which are, in essence, controlled explosions themselves.21

While it is theoretically possible to achieve explosive yields of up to 

1,000 times those of modern explosives, near-term advancements are likely 

to be much more modest.22 Though nanotechnology is a rapidly advancing 

field, the ability to create the assemblers necessary to produce such explosives on a meaningful scale is currently limited, and in the next 10–20 

years, most scientists in the field believe an advancement of 5- to 10-fold is 

likely. Nonetheless, a 10-fold advancement makes future explosives so 

powerful that the three-ounce bottle of liquid one is allowed to carry on 

board a civilian jetliner may have to be reduced to 0.3 ounces—only a few 

drops. Very small and easily concealed explosives could pose significant 

risks to lives and property, and this miniaturization may result in a more 

challenging threat in the years ahead.23
16

Militarily, there are two positive aspects to this technology. First, the 

meticulousness needed to create these explosives would produce a very 

precise and reliable yield, allowing for potentially greater accuracy and 

lower collateral damage from newer weapons designs. Second, the increased thrust potential emanating from these materials may significantly 

solve challenges associated with getting heavy objects into space. 

Historically, roughly 90 percent of all rocket mass has been either fuel or 

the systems that contain the fuel. The amount of thrust that a unit of fuel 

can produce is called specific impulse (ISP). Increasing the energy content 

of the fuel 5- to 10-fold would increase the ISP proportionately and greatly 

reduce the amount of mass of a rocket that would need to be devoted to 

fuel and its associated system.24 Though this dynamic has long been understood, the breakthroughs in nanotechnology may soon allow the dynamic 

to be exploited. While this may make it easier for man or robots to explore 

the stars or launch satellites, it would, of course, make it easier for other 

actors to launch objects at long distances, posing yet another potential threat.

The last area where nanotechnology poses a potential threat is in designing molecules or nanoparticles to interact with materiel to cause severe damage to infrastructure or materiel. “White nanoparticles” are designed to specifically interact with their environment and to “pick up” any 

foreign debris located on the surface to which they are applied. In short 

they are created as a very powerful agent designed to strip the surface of 

anything that should not be there. Similar agents could be designed to 

cause the degradation of materials and play havoc with critical components or infrastructure.25

Nuclear Weapons

 The study participants do not see nuclear weapons disappearing from 

the world stage during the time frame being examined. Nuclear weapons 

will remain a threat. Today, the “nuclear club” is estimated to stand at nine, 

and for the record, the study participants do include Israel in this number.26

Iran’s nascent nuclear program has been well reported in the press, and 

North Korea has already successfully accomplished nuclear tests. 

Counterproliferation as a mission set would appear to have failed. While 

the Stuxnet virus may set Iran’s program back by a few years, it does not 

guarantee an end to the program. While the engineering to refine the materials 

is dangerous and difficult and the safety systems needed to protect workers 

are complex, the science behind these devices has been published in high 

school physics textbooks for the past 30 years.27

By the 2030s, it would seem likely that the gradual upward trend of 

states with nuclear weapons will continue. Already, Iran’s potential quest 

for a nuclear weapon has triggered interest in the Persian Gulf region, and 

this dynamic may well spread elsewhere. As will be discussed further, 
17

it seems likely that nation-states can be deterred from using these weapons. 

However, the more widely proliferated they become, the more opportunities 

groups and individuals may have to appropriate one. For reasons that will 

be discussed more fully, this study team considers such a scenario the 

greater risk of proliferation.

Directed Energy

This study addresses two different forms of directed energy, both of 

which represent threats to military and civilian personnel. The first is the 

pulsed type, which includes such phenomena as pulsed high-powered microwaves, electromagnetic pulses, and a set of natural phenomena that mirror 

the effects of these two weapons types. The second type of directed energy 

threat is continuous wave in nature. The power output of these weapons, 

usually referred to as lasers, has reached tactically significant levels in the 

last few years, and further developments are likely in the near future.

The discovery of the potential anti-electronic utility of pulsed forms of 

energy came by accident. In 1962, shortly after the Soviet Union had 

breached a nuclear testing moratorium, the United States tested a 1.4-megaton 

nuclear device 400 kilometers above Johnston Atoll in an experiment called 

Starfish Prime.28 Approximately 1,300 kilometers away, in the Hawaiian 

Islands, street lights burned out, radio stations were knocked off the air, 

cars stopped due to burned-out generators and alternators, and some telephone systems were knocked off-line. The relationship between these 

events was not initially obvious and took some time to verify.29 It is important to note that not every street light was disabled, that many cars still ran, 

and that some telephones still worked. Nonetheless, many systems stopped 

working that night. Only later did the reasons become clear.

A few years later, in 1967, both the United States and the Soviet Union 

replicated these pulsed-energy effects. It was discovered that nuclear detonations above the ionosphere would charge this region of the upper atmosphere and generate intense electromagnetic fields across the earth’s surface. These fields fluctuate quickly and induce electric currents in all 

metallic objects they encounter. If the electricity generated is above the 

designed load for the system, the system shorts out and subsequently fails.30

Fearing the effects such weapons could create, the United States and USSR 

together drafted the “Outer Space Treaty” (more formally, The Treaty on 

Principals Governing the Activities of States in Exploration and Use of Outer 

Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies), which bans only 

weapons of mass destruction from space and does so because of the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) phenomenon.31

A very similar phenomenon can be reproduced using a nonnuclear 

pulsed power generator on the earth’s surface. While physicists will be 

quick to point out that the precise shape of the pulsed waveform is different 
18

from that of a nuclear blast, its effects on electronics are nonetheless the 

same.32 Inducing an electromagnetic field across wires, computer circuits, 

or any other conductive material produces electric current within the 

wires. Like EMP, this current can wreak havoc with computers, power distribution, and electronic control systems—the very systems involved in 

controlling our national critical infrastructure, financial and banking 

systems, and computers and communications systems used to command 

and control military forces worldwide. 

The level of damage done to these systems is related to the field strength 

of the magnetic field induced by the pulsed microwave device and the sensitivity of the equipment.33 It is important to realize that as computer chip 

spacing becomes more compact in our quest to produce ever more powerful and faster computers, the amount of energy needed to short out the 

computer circuits decreases with the square of the chip spacing. Stated 

more plainly, the ability to destroy or damage computer control systems 

is increasing exponentially as the computer chips become faster.34 Just as 

important, our ability to store and generate pulsed power in the form of 

microwaves is also increasing exponentially with time. In 2003 it was possible 

to produce 20 gigawatts of pulsed power output in a 400-pound device. 

Today several efforts are in the works on terawatt-class devices, some of 

which are explosively powered, representing a near-100-fold improvement 

in roughly a decade.35 In 2002 conventional pulsed microwave devices had 

relatively short ranges. Today small, portable, reusable weapons have ranges 

in the hundreds of meters. At the rate these technologies are changing, by 

the 2030s the ranges of these systems will be in miles or tens of miles, making them tactically and strategically significant.36

As the team was studying the troubling effects of pulsed power on computer and electrical systems, we stumbled upon a disturbing finding that 

changes the way the United States must look at deterrence specifically in 

this area. There is a natural phenomenon that creates these same electromagnetic fields, at very high levels, that can damage or destroy the nation’s 

computer and electrical infrastructure. Unlike individuals, groups, or nationstates, this phenomenon is not deterrable. In short the day will come when 

the United States, and indeed the world, will have to deal with this problem 

on a massive scale, and the astronomical record suggests it happens on 

average once every 50 years or so.37

Solar coronal mass ejections—solar flares—send charged particles into 

the earth’s ionosphere, which in turn can create strong magnetic fields on 

the earth. One such flare, much smaller than the once-every-50-year event 

referred to above, occurred on 13 March 1989. Perturbations in the earth’s 

magnetic field caused by the charged solar particles induced electrical currents in power lines and all conductive metals. These currents flowed into 

generators and transformers at power plants across the globe, affecting 

some severely. The power failed across much of eastern Canada, and due to 
19

continued current fluctuations in the power lines, restoration could not 

begin for nine hours. The Toronto Stock Exchange had to close.38 While 

most pieces of the power grid survived the flare, some did not.39

It is important that the flare of 13 March was just barely an X-class flare.40

Much larger solar flares are in the astronomical record, but they predate the 

construction of the modern electrical grid. The result is that our electrical 

and computer systems have never faced an extremely large flare, and as a 

result, no one has personal experience with what such an event would be 

like. We do have computer models based on smaller flares that give us an 

indication of what could happen, and what they tell us is disturbing. 

Figure 6 shows the impact of a once-every-50-year solar flare, notionally 

at a level of 4,800 nanoteslas per minute and centered at about the latitude 

of the US-Canadian border. This is a flare similar to the one that hit the 

earth in May 1921. The areas outlined in black would see blackouts with 

concomitant destruction of the electrical-producing infrastructure. The 

sizes of the circles (both red and green) indicate the level of current that 

would be induced along the power lines and other metallic objects. The 

color merely indicates whether the charge would be positive or negative, 

but it is important to note that both can cause catastrophic damage. The 

transformers that would be destroyed would take years to replace as these 

are custom-manufactured pieces of equipment. The economic impact 

would be well into the trillions of dollars and result in an economic downturn of depression magnitude.41

Figure 6. Impact of a May 1921–class solar flare on US electric grid. (John 

Kappenman, “The Future: Solutions or Vulnerabilities?” [presentation, Space 

Weather Workshop, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, 

CO, 28 April – 1 May 2008].)
20

The May 1921 solar flare is not, however, the worst-case scenario. On 1 

September 1859, a British scientist had sketched a set of sunspots. As he 

was drawing them, a solar flare so large that it could be seen with the unaided eye blotted out the spots. Within a minute, the flare was over. The 

next morning, the aurora borealis and aurora australius were seen well into 

the tropics. The auroras were so bright that newspapers could be read outside at night as if it were daytime. Telegraph wires went haywire and operated even after the batteries had been disconnected. Electric arcing from 

these systems electrocuted operators and set telegraph papers on fire.42

There were reports in the Great Plains of electrical arcing or lightning bolts 

dancing from cattle fences to the ground as the wires between posts were 

energized. The models that suggest nearly half the nation would lose electricity in a 1921-like event indicate that should another flare the size of the 

1859 event occur, virtually the entire electrical grid would be catastrophically damaged with recovery time estimated at over 10 years.43

As we found with cybersecurity issues, very little is being done to address 

this problem. Protection of our computer and electrical infrastructure 

against pulsed wave forms, whether man-made or natural, is not occurring. 

In addition, policy guidance is also lacking. The result is that while the dangers of our current systems are known, the vulnerabilities remain.44

The other form of directed energy is continuous wave, the most common 

being lasers. While lasers have overpromised and underdelivered for decades, 

this is no longer true. In November 2010, CSAT placed an order for a small, 

handheld category IV weapons-grade laser for $299. To the researchers’ surprise, the order processed on “Black Friday,” the Friday after Thanksgiving, 

resulting in CSAT’s receiving the “three-for-one” special deal. We paid less 

than $100 for each of the three lasers that arrived on our doorstep about six 

weeks later. Figure 7 depicts the blue variant of this laser, which measures approximately 20 centimeters long and approximately five centimeters in diameter, weighing about 250 grams. It is a potentially lethal device, but its greatest 

dangers come from its ability to permanently blind a person in less than 0.25 

seconds at a range out to approximately 150 meters. It is capable of melting 

plastic and setting flammable materials ablaze (451° F or 233° c).

45 The laser 

runs off a single lithium-ion battery, roughly size AA, which enables the laser 

to operate continuously for 120 minutes on a single charge.

Figure 7. Spyder Arctic III Blue Laser
21

A company operating in Hong Kong began producing and marketing 

the laser in the fall of 2010. At the time of production, only the country of 

Malta had definitive restrictions on the sale or importation of this device.46

In the United States, importation was legal. Though not directly attributable to this laser, in the first nine months of 2010, the United States had 299 

lasing incidents against civilian aircraft. There were 2,700 more in the last 

three months of that year. Blinding incidents have also increased in other 

countries, including some attacks on motorists.47

Meanwhile, lasers for aircraft and weapons applications have reached 

tactically significant power levels. Chemical oxygen iodine lasers (COIL) 

have been designed for applications ranging from missile defense to ground 

attack. The airborne laser system, recently decommissioned by the US Department of Defense, was a megawatt-class system, roughly 1 million times 

more powerful than the handheld laser above. Air Force Special Operations Command placed a much smaller COIL device on board a C-130 

aircraft and successfully disabled targets on a weapons range, including 

stopping a Ford F-150 truck.48

As with pulsed power devices, laser efficiency and effectiveness are continuing to improve. Small handheld devices powerful enough to blind or 

kill soon will be in the hands of those who may seek to create fear or terror. 

Larger lasers, with speed-of-light kill capability, will likewise be obtainable 

via arms markets well within the next 20–30 years.49

Space

The last of the six threat areas explored by the team involves threats to 

assets in space. Both China and the United States have demonstrated that 

satellites in low Earth orbit are vulnerable to direct-ascent attacks.50 Directed 

energy research is continuing in several countries and will pose a risk to 

satellite operations in the very near future.51 Lasers that can dazzle or destroy 

satellites, likely all the way to geostationary orbit, will probably be fielded 

by the 2030s. The result is that space assets, both military and civilian, are 

and will increasingly be vulnerable to attack, either from the ground or 

from space.

What many may not realize is the important roles that satellites play in 

the economy and in our everyday lives. Most people intuitively understand 

that the Global Positioning System (GPS) provides their location and, in 

combination with a receiver, can help them locate hospitals or gas stations. 

What is not widely understood is that GPS operates by triangulating one’s 

position through the use of very precise timing of the receipt of signals 

from the satellite constellation. So precise is this timing that GPS time data, 

including stoplight timing, is now an integral part of traffic control systems. 

They are also crucial for the operation of automated teller machines that 

enable banking customers to obtain cash when they are not at a branch of 
22

their primary banking institution and are integrated into the machines that 

process credit and debit card purchases. GPS timing data control the sequencing of mobile phone calls through the cellular tower network in 

many countries. Airlines rely on them for direct-route navigation. They 

also control the switching of power networks and the transfer of electrical 

power between grids to avoid power surges on power lines as generators 

are brought online or taken offline as the power load increases and decreases.52 The reliance on these signals is rapidly increasing.53

The loss of this satellite constellation alone would suddenly stop credit 

card transactions, produce gridlock in many of the world’s cities as traffic 

lights ceased to operate, take the mobile phone network offline, and keep 

bank customers from being able to withdraw cash from their savings or 

checking accounts unless they dealt directly with a bank teller at their 

banking institution. The second- and third-order effects to people’s lives 

and the nation’s economy would be considerable. 

Other satellites provide us with data essential for weather warnings, facilitate 

long-distance telecommunications, transmit television signals, and enable 

rapid transfers of data from distant locations. These systems are all potentially vulnerable as well.

From a military standpoint, military aviation and ground system locations are dependent, at least in part, on GPS positioning. Military operations are affected by the weather, and satellite pictures and the atmospheric 

data embedded therein are crucial to modern weather forecasting.54

The study team’s research and interviews with a variety of space-reliant 

companies and government agencies revealed that, much like the national 

critical infrastructure on the ground, our space assets are poorly protected.55 As with the ground-based systems, the cost of hardening or making 

these systems resilient to attack is greater than the cost of insuring them 

against loss, and as such, a positive financial market disincentive exists to 

address any current or projected space vulnerabilities.

Notes

1. Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 17–169. 

2. See the argument presented by Peter Schwartz, Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead 

in a Time of Turbulence (New York: Gotham Books, 2003). 

3. Idaho National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, “Protecting the National 

Infrastructure: Idaho’s Test Range,” fact sheet (Idaho Falls, ID: Idaho National Laboratory, 

n.d.), accessed 14 May 2012, http://www.inl.gov/nationalsecurity/factsheets/docs/critical

_infrastructure_test_range.pdf.

4. The precise area of attack appears to remain classified, so the authors cannot say what 

system or set of systems was affected to result in the catastrophic failure of the generator. 

That the generator catastrophically failed is known and was aired on CNN News and is also 

available via other media, including YouTube. For the original article on the test, see Jeanne 

Meserve, “Sources: Staged Cyber Attack Reveals Vulnerability in Power Grid,” CNN.com, 26 

September 2007, accessed 14 May 2012, http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-26/us/power

.at.risk_1_generator-cyber-attack-electric-infrastructure?_s=PM:US. 
23

5. Jill Slay and Michael Miller, “Lessons Learned from the Maroochy Water Breach,” 

Critical Infrastructure Protection 253 (November 2007): 73–82. For a broader discussion of 

these events, see also Rose Tsang, “Cyberthreats, Vulnerabilities and Attacks on SCADA 

Networks” (working paper, University of California–Berkeley, 2009), accessed 14 May 

2012, http://gspp.berkeley.edu/iths/Tsang_SCADA%20Attacks.pdf. 

6. Pierre Thomas, “Teen Hacker Faces Federal Charges,” CNN Interactive, 18 March 

1988, http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9803/18/juvenile.hacker/index.html. 

7. For more on this see David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold 

War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2010), 35. 

8. Microsoft developed “Photosynth,” a program to stitch pictures together smoothly 

and seamlessly. Available on the Internet for free, the program enables compilation of 

images across space and time to produce the ability to conduct three-dimensional walkthroughs of any facility ever photographed. For more see John P. Geis II, Ted Hailes, and 

Grant Hammond, “Technology and the Comprehensive Approach: Part Problem, Part 

Solution,” in Capability Development in Support of Comprehensive Approaches: Transforming 

International Civil-Military Relations, ed. Derrick Neal and Linton Wells (Washington, DC: 

National Defense University Press, 2011), 69–86.

9. Ibid.

10. Human Genome Program, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, 

Department of Energy, “Human Genome Project Information,” 31 July 2012, http://www

.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml. 

11. Michael B. Miller, “How Tall of a Stack of Paper Would We Need to Print Out an 

Entire Human Genome?,” working paper (Minneapolis: Division of Epidemiology and 

Community Health, University of Minnesota, 15 October 2005), http://bio4.us/biotrends

/human_genome_height.html. 

12. Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO), “Human Proteome Project (HPP),” 

HUPO, 21 March 2012, accessed 14 May 2012, http://www.hupo.org/research/hpp/. 

13. More specifically, these medications are called tyrosine-kinase inhibitors, and they 

block reproduction by inhibiting the enzymes involved in signal transduction cascades by 

adding a phosphate group to the appropriate protein. For some of the latest in developments 

on the leukemia medications, see Nicholas J. DiBella, “First-line Treatment of Chronic 

Myeloid Leukemia: Imatinib versus Nilotinib and Dasatinib,” Community Oncology 8, no. 2 

(February 2011): 65–72.

14. “Mouse Pox or Bioweapon?,” BBC World Service, 17 January 2001, accessed 15 May 

2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/010117_mousepox.shtml. 

15. William Bains, Biotechnology from A to Z (New York: Oxford University Press, 

2004), 52.

16. The dictionaries issued to the authors by the federal government are among those 

that do not yet contain an entry for nanotechnology.

17. Stores J. Hall, Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology (Amherst, NY: 

Prometheus, 2005), 15–22.

18. Definition synthesized from ibid., 15–51.

19. Leading biological scientists, interviews.

20. Witold Gutkowski and Tomasz A. Kowalewski, Mechanics of the 21st Century: 

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Warsaw, 

Poland, 15–21 August 2004 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005), 379; and Oleg 

Vasylkiv, Yoshio Sakka, and Valeriy V. Skorokhod, “Nano-Blast Synthesis of Nano-size 

CeO2

-Gd2O3 Powders,” Journal of American Ceramic Society 89, no. 6 (June 2006): 1822–26.

21. John W. Cole, Isaac F. Silvera, and John P. Foote, “Conceptual Launch Vehicles 

Using Metallic Hydrogen Propellant,” American Institute of Physics Conference Proceedings

969 (2008): 977–84.
24

22. It is interesting to note that a yield increase of 1,000-fold would create a set of 

conventional ordnance with yields in excess of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and 

Nagasaki during World War II. This would necessitate revisiting the question of what 

constitutes a weapon of mass destruction. 

23. Ancel Yarbrough, The Impact of Nanotechnology Energetics on the Department of 

Defense by 2035 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 2010), http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc

/awcgate/cst/bh2010_yarbrough.pdf.

24. Henry D. Baird et al., “Spacelift 2025: The Supporting Pillar for Space Superiority,” 

in Air Force 2025, vol. 2 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1996), 117–50.

25. Of course nanotechnology, like biotechnology above, can cut both ways. The same 

basic science that can create nanocorrosives can also create nanocoatings that would make 

systems resist corrosion. There are over 30,000 scholarly articles on this subject. Among the 

more heavily cited are S. Radhakrishnan et al., “Conducting Polyaniline-nano-TiO2

Composites for Smart Corrosion Resistant Coatings,” Electrochimica Acta 54, no. 4 (30 

January 2009): 1249–54; Lidia Benea et al., “Wear Corrosion Properties of Nano-Structured 

SiC-Nickel Composite Coatings Obtained by Electroplating,” Wear 249, no. 10–11 

(November 2001): 995–1003; and Martin Kendig, Melitta Hon, and Leslie Warren, “ ‘Smart’ 

Corrosion Inhibiting Coating,” Progress in Organic Coatings 47, no. 3 (September 2003): 

183–89.

26. The study participants believe that the United States, Russia, China, the United 

Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea are nuclear states. Iran and 

Myanmar appear to be attempting to join the ranks though this is not knowable with 

certitude.

27. A discussion of the chain reaction necessary and the detonation of a nuclear weapon 

can be found in George Shortley and Dudley Williams, Elements of Physics, 5th ed. 

(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 924–27. This book was used for high school 

physics at Brookfield East High School, in Brookfield, Wisconsin, in 1979. As this was the 

book’s fifth printing, the authors make the assumption that it was likely being used in 

several other learning institutions at the same time. 

28. House of Representatives, Electromagnetic Pulse Threats to U.S. Military and Civilian 

Infrastructure: Hearing before the Military Research and Development Subcommittee of the 

Committee on Armed Services, 106th Cong., 1st sess., 7 October 1999 (prepared statement of 

Lowell Wood, member of director’s technical staff, Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory), 30–36. See also John P. Geis II, Directed Energy Weapons on the Battlefield: A 

New Vision for 2025 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Center for Strategy and Technology, Air War 

College, 2003), 8–11.

29. Electromagnetic Pulse Threats; and Geis, Directed Energy Weapons.

30. A. B. Pittock et al., “Direct Effects of Nuclear Detonations,” in Environmental 

Consequences of Nuclear War, vol. 1, ed. A. Barrie Pittock, Mark Harwell, and T. C. 

Hutchinson (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1986), 1–23.

31. Geis, Directed Energy Weapons, 9.

32. Pittock et al., “Direct Effects of Nuclear Detonations,” 17–20; and Geis, Directed 

Energy Weapons, 11–14. 

33. For a complete discussion on the precise thresholds of field strength to cause certain 

levels of damage, see Geis, Directed Energy Weapons, 11–15.

34. There is a method to harden computer chips against this phenomenon, but such 

hardening is expensive, and very few foundries in the world produce these chips.

35. Carlo Kopp, “The Electronmagnetic Bomb—A Weapon of Electrical Mass 

Destruction,” Air and Space Power Journal: Chronicles Online Journal, 1996, http://www

.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/apjemp.html. 

36. Geis, Directed Energy Weapons, 11–15.
25

37. Paul Kintner (professor of electrical and computer engineering, Cornell University), 

interview by the authors, 17 September 2009. Dr. Kintner served on the science board of the 

National Academies and was regarded as one of the nation’s leading scientists on the 

impacts of space weather on both space and terrestrial systems. He was also the director of 

the Global Positioning Systems Laboratory at Cornell. 

38. Leigh Dayton, “Solar Storms Halt Stock Market as Computers Crash,” New Scientist, 

9 September 1989, 35. Dayton also quotes Canadian scientists as attributing rashes of 

computer failures across the country—to include individuals’’. As such, it would typicall 

personal computers at home—to the solar flare activity of March 1989. 

39. Tony Phillips, “Solar Shield—Protecting the North American Power Grid,” NASA 

Science News, 26 October 2010, accessed 19 December 2012, http://science.nasa.gov/science

-news/science-at-nasa/2010/26oct_solarshield/.

40. The biggest flares are known as “X-class flares,” based on a classification system that 

divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near 

background levels), followed by B, C, M, and X. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, 

each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is 10 times stronger than 

an M and 100 times stronger than a C. Within each letter class there is a finer scale from 1 to 9. 

C-class and smaller flares are too weak to affect Earth noticeably. M-class flares can cause 

brief radio blackouts at the poles and minor radiation storms that might endanger astronauts.

Although X is the last letter used in the scale, there are flares more than 10 times the 

power of an X1; so X-class flares can go higher than 9. The most powerful flare measured 

with modern methods occurred in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so 

powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28. Mark 

Paquette, “What Exactly is an X Class Solar Flare?” Astronomy Blog, AccuWeather.com, 10 

March 2011, accessed 5 March 2013, http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/astronomy

/what-exactly-is-a-xclass-solar-flare/53605.

41. Committee on the Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather Events, 

Space Studies Board, National Research Council of the National Academies, Severe Space 

Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts (Washington, DC: 

National Academies Press, 2008), accessed 17 May 2012, http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12507

.html; and Kintner, interview. The National Academies estimate the economic impact at 

over $1 trillion and perhaps as much as $2 trillion, or a loss of roughly 10 percent of gross 

deomestic product, which is the economic definition of a depression. Some of the over 130 

million people who would lose electricity in such a scenario would have to wait the entire 

six years before the lights came back on though restoration to others via rolling blackouts 

could happen more quickly. 

42. Trudy E. Bell and Tony Phillips, “A Super Solar Flare,” NASA Science News, 6 May 2008,

accessed 17 May 2012, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_

carringtonflare/.

43. Kintner, interview.

44. Michael Walters (Department of Homeland Security), e-mail and phone 

conversations with the authors. Kenneth Friedman (Department of Energy), e-mails and 

phone conversations with the authors. In e-mail and telephone conversations, both sources 

confirmed that there are no plans in place to address the challenges posed to the national 

critical infrastructure by solar flares or other like effects. E-mails and phone conversations 

occurred 9–13 May 2010.

45. No endorsement of the product being discussed is intended or implied. The 

products listed here are dangerous and require substantial training to handle safely. For 

academic purposes, additional data may be found at “Spyder Arctic,” Wicked Lasers, 

accessed 15 January 2013, http://www.wickedlasers.com/lasers/Spyder_III_Pro_Arctic

_Series-96-37.html. Following our initial research, a new company began marketing an 
26

even smaller laser that is much more powerful than the Spyder. Its laser creates temperatures 

of up to 850 degrees at the point of lasing. 

46. The authors searched for importation restrictions on lasers across the world. While 

it is possible some were missed, after an exhaustive search, only the country of Malta had 

laws we could locate that prevented the importation of a category IV device.

47. The authors presented early findings at the Aircraft Survivability Conference in 

Berlin, Germany, 13 October 2010. Discussions with members of the German parliament 

who were present revealed concern over recent lasing incidents on the autobahn. These 

government leaders were unaware of the newly marketed handheld device. 

48. Matthew Potter, “Boeing Video of Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) Aircraft,” Defense 

Procurement News, 2 October 2009, accessed 25 May 2011, http://www.defenseprocurementnews

.com/2009/10/02/boeing-video-of-advanced-tactical-laser-atl-aircraft/.

49. Geis, Directed Energy Weapons, 16.

50. Craig Covault, “Chinese Test Anti-Satellite Weapon,” Aviation Week and Space 

Technology, 17 January 2007, accessed 19 December 2012, http://www.spaceref.com/news

/viewnews.html?id=1188. 

51. William Diehl, Continued Optical Sensor Operations in a Laser Environment (Maxwell 

AFB, AL: Air War College, 2011), http://dtlweb.au.af.mil///exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media

/L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS81NjcwOA==.pdf. 

52. National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing 

(NCO), “GPS Applications,” 10 April 2012, http://www.gps.gov/applications/. As of 18 May 

2012, GPS.gov is the official US governmental GPS website. The reader should note that the 

uses of GPS listed here are not exhaustive, and many others can be found on the site.

53. P. Daly, “Navstar GPS and GLONASS: Global Satellite Navigation Systems,” 

Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal 5, no. 6 (December 1993): 349–57.

54. NCO, “GPS Applications”; and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and 

Information Service (NESDIS), “NOAA’s Geostationary and Polar-Orbiting Weather 

Satellites,” NOAA Satellite Information System, 6 December 2011, accessed 18 May 2012, 

http://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/ml/genlsatl.html. 

55. Hardening efforts remain stable but at low levels. In late 2010, Honeywell introduced 

a radiation-hard, 64-megabyte memory for satellites. This is the state of the art, which 

greatly lags chip sets and memory for terrestrial-based personal computers. For more 

information, see John McHale, “Radiation-Hardened Electronics Technology Remains 

Stable amid Steady Demand in the Space Market,” Military and Aerospace Magazine, 21 

May 2010, accessed 18 May 2012, http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2010/05

/radiation-hardened-electronics.html; and John Keller, “Megarad-Level Rad-Hard 

64-Megabit Solid-State Memory Introduced by Honeywell for Military Satellites,” Military 

and Aerospace Magazine, 10 December 2010, accessed 18 May 2012, http://www

.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2010/12/megarad-level-rad-hard.html. 
27

Chapter 3

A Structural Model of Deterrence

In order to evaluate the six technological threats previously discussed, 

the study team had to understand deterrence concepts and deterrence theory. 

The team undertook an intensive effort to review the literature on both 

conventional as well as nuclear deterrence theory and to determine what 

key elements transcended the writings of the various authors that helped 

the world develop an understanding of this dynamic.

Based on more than 20 works and deliberately selected to span Western and 

Eastern cultures, the model, depicted in figure 8, depicts already acknowledged 

aspects of deterrence theory and their relationships to each other.1

 As such, it 

became a framework for thinking and analysis. While the study team considered 

attempting to engage in Bayesian probability modeling as a study methodology, the necessary data was not readily available, and such an analysis could 

not be conducted within the study deadlines.2

 This model, however, could be 

used to undertake such efforts as part of a future research program.

Deterrence

Communicate

Threat

Unambiguously

Threat Must

Be Made

Based on

Adversary

Value System

Trust Neutralize

Detect Defend Recruits

Intelligence

Media

Host

Societies

World

Opinion

Harden/

Robust

Control Opinion

and Approbation

Lives

Salvation

Families

Groups

Threat Must

Be Received

Deter

Development

of Capability

Painful

Threat Credibility Prevent

Attack

Protect from

Attack Thwart Goals

Denial Fear/

Retribution

Figure 8. A structural model of deterrence theory

As the team examined the literature, it became clear that the focus during the Cold War was mainly on the left half of the model—the side labeled 

“Fear/Retribution.” This thinking made sense because during this time 

frame, the treaties in effect limited each side (the United States and Soviet 

Union) to 100 ballistic missile interceptors.3

 Since each side in the Cold 

War had vastly more than 100 nuclear weapon systems, there was an implicit 
28

assumption that it would be impossible to deny the opposing side the ability to carry out a massive strike that would inflict severe damage on the 

opponent should it choose to do so. As a result, the “denial” side of the 

equation was limited in value only to that which was necessary to ensure 

that a retaliatory capability existed. There was no method by which one 

could deny the initial attack, and as such, much of the denial side of the 

model was ignored, leaving mutual destruction or unacceptable levels of 

damage (fear) as the linchpin upon which deterrence was based. 

This study concludes that with regard to many of the future threats, the 

relative importance of the two sides of deterrence theory changes. It is important to recognize that the theory itself is structurally sound. The difference is that with regard to many of the threats we face in the future, there 

are opportunities to prevent or protect from attacks, to thwart the goals of 

prospective adversaries, and to deter or hinder the development of these 

capabilities in the first place. These key elements of the right-hand side of 

the model take on new levels of importance in the future and thus constitute a change in the way in which the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force need to operate in the future.

In operationalizing the model against the array of future threats, many 

of which are conventional, we turned to an equation verbally described in 

John J. Mearsheimer’s book Conventional Deterrence. Mearsheimer argues 

that the failure of deterrence is specified as a calculus in the mind of the 

actor to be deterred, referring to this calculus as “the attacker’s fear to the 

consequences of . . . action.”4

 While Mearsheimer describes this calculus in 

great detail, this study turned it into a mathematical expression. An actor 

is deterred if the equation depicted in figure 9 holds.

Adversary’s Assessment

of Success

Probability x Value

Adversary’s Assessment

of Failure

Probability x Value – < 0

Figure 9. The deterrence equation

Mearsheimer argues that several factors play in this calculus of whether 

deterrence will succeed. The first is the adversary’s perception of the value 

of success itself—the gain to be incurred by attacking. The second factor is 

the probability that the attack will succeed. The product of these two elements comprises the potential adversary’s assessment of success (green 

box in fig. 9). Only if the assessment of failure is greater than that of success 

will a rational actor be deterred. This failure assessment is calculated in 

much the same manner—the cost of failing is multiplied by the probability 

of failure. If the failure assessment (red box) is the greater of the two terms, 

then the value of the equation is less than zero, and the actor is deterred.5
29

Some presuppositons embedded in this calculus are assumptions that 

must be highlighted in light of the new threats. First, it assumes the actor is 

rational. This does not mean that the actor’s calculus is the same as one’s 

own or that it matches one’s values—only that it has a rational basis underpinning it. Second, it assumes that one can attribute the attack to the proper 

actor. While in the nuclear era this was relatively easy, as nation-states 

launching ballistic missiles in a global thermonuclear war do leave behind 

a “calling card” of sorts, this has recently proven much more difficult in 

newly created artificial domains such as cyberspace. 

In fact it is important to explore what happens to the deterrence equation 

in the absence of attribution. Should attribution be problematic, it tilts both 

parts of the deterrence equation in favor of the potential aggressor. An inability to attribute an attack means that the probability of successfully carrying it out likely rises or at a minimum remains the same. The probability of 

incurring punishment clearly diminishes because without attribution it is 

impossible to know toward whom the punishment should be directed. As a 

result, in the absence of proper attribution, the deterrence equation tilts in 

favor of the potential adversary, making successful deterrence less likely. 

Of equal concern is what happens when attribution is either assumed or 

figured incorrectly. A failure to properly attribute often leads to simpleminded decisions along the lines of what actors expect.6

 Further, in the 

absence of data or in the midst of uncertainty, decision makers tend to 

engage in more violent modes of coping with the ambiguity.7

 These dynamics were tested in exercises conducted by CSAT in conjunction with 

this research—exercises that placed participants in a war game in a position of relative uncertainty with regard to adverse conditions experienced 

by the United States and its allies. Even though sufficient data were available to the participants to uncover the actual actors, the dynamics predicted by attribution theory above were present. The vast majority of the 

participants attributed the hostile actions to the wrong actor. 

In a real-world situation, such misattribution can have disastrous consequences. When Japan sequestered the Chinese fishing vessel for transgressing its territorial waters in the Senkaku Islands on 8 September 2010, imagine that a third-party state had launched a cyber attack against the United 

States via servers within mainland China. Had such an event occurred, and 

had the United States then misattributed the source of the attack to the 

Chinese government (an occurrence predicted by attribution theory), then 

the ensuing consequences would have been of a type that Japan, China, and 

the United States would not have wanted. Getting attribution correct is essential not only to realize deterrence but also to avoid unintended conflict. 

Complicating the problem of attribution is the fact that the time to respond to attacks from several emerging threats is much less than the reaction time that was available in the nuclear deterrence era. As a result, the 

time necessary to observe events, orient to these events, decide on a course 
30

of action, and then act on that decision (a cyclical process designated by 

John Boyd as the observe-orient-decide-act [OODA] loop) is shrinking.8

With several new technologies operating either at or near the speed of 

light, this decision loop is rapidly shrinking toward a point requiring much 

more rapid capabilities to observe and attribute incoming attacks.

We can see this dynamic at work in recent events. On 6 May 2010 at approximately 2:32 p.m. (EDT), a large mutual fund complex executed a 

single sell order for 75,000 E-Mini Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 contracts, 

a trade valued at approximately $4.1 billion.9

 The sell order was programmed to execute sales at a level equal to 9 percent of the rate at which 

the securities had been sold up to that point in the day but without regard 

to price. In essence this was an order to sell these contracts at market price. 

While this was a large order, it was only the third-largest purchase for this 

security in the preceding 12 months. Nonetheless, after about nine minutes, 

the existing demand for these contracts had been exhausted, and the price 

was falling quickly, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average already down 

nearly 600 points. This caused short-term traders to sell shares in the equities 

markets to cover their losses on the S&P contracts. The result was a sudden 

fall in the market price of the S&P 500 and other equities within the markets. 

By 2:46 p.m., the Dow Jones average had fallen 1,000 points in 10 minutes. 

The investigation into the event showed that the original sell order triggered a trading “tipping point” that had been built into algorithms within 

the market’s mechanisms. When all automatic trading mechanisms were 

halted just before 2:46 p.m., market prices began to recover.

The investigation as to how this event, called the “Flash Crash” or “Crash 

of 2:45 PM,” occurred revealed that computer trading had moved so 

quickly that the machines were selling and buying shares of stocks and 

contracts faster than investors could keep up. This is a classic example of a 

complex dynamic system—sometimes called a chaotic system—in which 

tipping points that, if crossed, rapidly takes the system to a new state.10

The nation-states that comprise our global security system are similarly 

chaotic and capable of rapidly tipping from one state to the next. This is not 

merely a phenomenon of machines. For example, on 28 June 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria triggered a conflict 

grossly out of proportion to the initial act. More than 9 million combatants 

would die in the conflict that ensued, which eventually involved large sections of the planet. In short, human society also can have tipping points 

where single acts or small sets of acts can cause reactions much larger than 

would normally be expected.

In the end, the human system in which we must deter is complex and 

chaotic. It has tipping points. Automation changes the speed with which 

these events can occur. In the “Crash of 2:45 PM,” roughly 10 minutes 

elapsed between the time a decision to sell contracts was executed and the 

point at which the stock market had lost trillions of dollars in value. In the 
31

case of World War I, a full month elapsed between the assassination of 

Archduke Ferdinand and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s invasion of the 

Kingdom of Serbia. In the modern age, time is disappearing. The OODA 

loop decision cycle is shrinking and rapidly collapsing into an OODA point. 

As attacks and actions today can be initiated at the speed of light by everfaster computers and weapon systems, the credibility of deterrence hinges on 

the capacity to accurately attribute such actions at ever-increasing speeds.

Notes

1. We derived the model primarily from the following scholars and works (the list is not 

exhaustive): Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 1966); Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, “What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 

1900–1989,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984): 496; Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence 

(Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004); Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore 

Balancing,” in The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics, 7th ed., ed. Robert 

J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 

311–26; Andrew J. Goodpaster, C. Richard Nelson, and Seymour J. Deitchman, “Deterrence: 

An Overview,” in Post–Cold War Conflict Deterrence (Washington, DC: National Academy 

Press, 1997), 10–38; Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence (Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2001); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of 

Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999); John P. 

Geis II et al., Discord or “Harmonious Society”? China in 2030, Occasional Paper no. 65, 

Center for Strategy and Technology (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2011); Bruce 

Russett and Alan C. Stam, “Courting Disaster: An Expanded NATO vs Russia and China,” 

Political Science Quarterly 113, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 361–82; Keith B. Payne, The Great American 

Gamble: Deterrence Theory and Practice from the Cold War to the Twenty-First Century

(Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2008); Union of Concerned Scientists, “Nuclear 

Weapons & Global Security: History of Russia’s Anti-Ballistic Missile System,” 2012, http://

www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/missile_defense/policy_issues

/history-of-russias.html; Yao Yunzhu, “Chinese Nuclear Policy and the Future of Minimum 

Deterrence,” Pacific Forum CSIS 6, no. 2 (September 2005): 31–40, http://csis.org/files

/media/csis/pubs/issuesinsights_v06n02.pdf; Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and 

Nuclear Realities,” in The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics, 6th ed., ed. 

Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (Malden, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 102–18; 

Bob Gourley, “Towards a Cyber Deterrent,” working paper (Vienna, VA: Cyber Conflict 

Studies Association, 29 May 2008), http://www.ctovision.com/cyber-deterrence-initiative.

html; Thomas P. M. Barnett, “Deterrence in the 21st Century,” in Deterrence 2.0: Deterring 

Violent Non-State Actors in Cyberspace, ed. Carl Hunt and Nancy Chesser (Washington, 

DC: US Strategic Command Global Innovation and Strategy Center, 10 January 2008), 

25–31; Edward D. Mansfield, Power Trade and War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 

Press, 1994); John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 

Press, 1985); Jack S. Levy, “The Causes of War: A Review of Theories,” in Behavior, Society 

and Nuclear War, vol. 1, ed. Philip E. Tetlock et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 

1989), 209–333; A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1980); Michael W. Doyle and Stephen Macedo, Striking First: Preemption 

and Prevention in International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); 

T. V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Complex Deterrence (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Anthony C. Cain, ed., Deterrence in the TwentyFirst Century: Proceedings (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2010).
32

2. Bayesian probability theory provides a mathematical framework for performing 

inference using probability. It is used to judge the relative validity of hypotheses given 

sparse or uncertain data.

3. Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist 

Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, US-USSR, 26 May 1972, 

accessed 18 May 2012, http://www.state.gov/t/isn/trty/16332.htm.

4. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, 23.

5. This calculus can be traced to Thucydides, who lamented in the fifth book of his 

History of the Peloponnesian War that in war “one side thinks that the profits to be won 

outweigh the risks to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face danger rather than 

accept an immediate loss.” Cited in Athanassios G. Platias and Constantinos Koliopoulos, 

Thucydides on Strategy: Grand Strategies in the Peloponnesian War and Their Relevance 

Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 125.

6. Harold H. Kelly, “The Process of Causal Attribution,” American Psychology 28, no. 2 

(1973): 107–28; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment under Uncertainty: 

Heuristics and Biases,” Science 185, no. 4157 (27 September 1974): 1124–31; and Richard 

Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Interference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment 

(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980). 

7. Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, 

Choice, and Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1977); Daniel Heradstveit and G. Matthew 

Bonham, “Decision-Making in the Face of Uncertainty: Attributions of Norwegian and 

American Officials,” Journal of Peace Research 23, no 4. (December 1986): 339–56.

8. John R. Boyd, briefing, subject: A Discourse on Winning and Losing, 1987, accessed 

20 December 2012, http://dnipogo.org/john-r-boyd/.

9. US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, US Securities and Exchange Commission, 

Findings Regarding the Market Events of May 6, 2010: Report of the Staffs of the CFTC and SEC to 

the Joint Advisory Committee on Emerging Regulatory Issues (Washington, DC: Securities and 

Exchange Commission, 30 September 2010), 2, accessed 21 May 2012, http://www.sec.gov/news

/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf. An E-Mini is an electronically traded futures contract on 

the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that represents a portion of the normal futures contracts. E-Mini 

contracts are available on a wide range of indexes such as the NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, S&P MidCap 

400, and others. For example, the E-Mini S&P 500 futures contract is one-fifth the size of the 

standard S&P 500 futures contract. Advantages to trading E-Mini contracts include liquidity, 

greater affordability for individual investors, and around-the-clock trading.

10. James Gleick, Chaos: Making of a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).
33

Chapter 4

The Delphi Study and Results

To better understand where the greatest challenges for deterrence lay, 

the study directors conducted a formal and informal Delphi study.1

 It drew 

upon participants (called “oracles” in the Delphi method) who had studied 

the six technologies under examination and had a working knowledge of 

deterrence theory and military strategy. These individuals were asked to 

respond in a manner that preserved their anonymity but made their comments, rationale, and ratings visible to all. After three rounds of the study, 

we had achieved consistency in the ratings for each of the three questions 

we sought to explore. Each question explored all of the six technologies 

and parsed the responses to separate dynamics that differed among nationstates, groups, and individuals.

The first question asked the respondents to use a Likert scale of one to 

five (very easy, easy, neutral, difficult, and very difficult) to rate the level of 

difficulty of deterring nation-states, groups, and individuals from launching an attack using each of the technologies shown in figure 10. The results 

show that it is more difficult to deter individuals, regardless of technology 

explored, than to deter nation-states. In addition we found that the team 

believed that bio-, nano-, and cyberspace technologies would likely be the most 

difficult to deter. Further, although the slope changed for each technology, the 

relationship across the three categories took on a mostly linear shape.

Cyberspace

Biotechnology

Nanotechnology

Directed Energy

Space

Nuclear

Nation State Group Individual

Most

Least

Type of Actor

Difficulty

Difficulty of Deterrence

Figure 10. Difficulty of deterrence: Delphi results

In the anonymous discussions during the formal Delphi sessions and in 

the broader discussions that took place during the informal Delphi study, 

the respondents were asked why this relationship was perceived as it was. 

In general the study participants believed that nation-states and groups 
34

placed value in their respective reputations. Moral constraints to use force 

and the results of international approbation act most strongly on nationstates.2

 Yet the oracles believed that for groups, especially the larger ones, 

the reputational issues were strong enough to make them easier to deter 

than small groups and individuals. Individuals, they argued, would be least 

affected by international norms and thus the hardest to deter.

The second question focused on the difficulty of attribution. As with the 

previous question, this one was parsed by both type of actor and technologies involved. 

The graph (fig. 11) takes on the same shape as the previous one but for 

different reasons. Here the individuals were considered the most difficult 

to attribute across all six technologies since they were the most likely to 

conduct an attack and successfully avoid leaving a distinguishing trail that 

would lead to properly attributing the source of the attack. Nation-states, 

on the other hand, because of their size and the bureaucracies that must 

approve these actions, often leave traceable indications of their responsibility 

for certain actions. Additionally, in some cases, the research efforts necessary to launch attack programs by nation-states in these areas would require funding of sufficient size to make it possible to trace the program.

Cyberspace

Biotechnology

Nanotechnology

Directed Energy

Space

Nuclear

Nation State Group Individual

Most

Least

Type of Actor

Difficulty

Difficulty of Attribution

Figure 11. Difficulty of attribution: Delphi results

The respondents perceived three types of technologies to be much 

harder to attribute than the rest. Attacks in cyberspace were considered 

difficult to attribute because, with proper planning, the attacks could be 

made difficult to trace and routed through third-party servers. Biological 

attacks were considered problematic because tracing the source of a disease 

or pathogen may be difficult, especially if it has a considerable incubation 

period. Should such an agent be distributed at a major transit hub, such as 

a major international airport, viruses would be hard to trace to their origins 
35

since the passenger traffic would leave a very large number of potential 

paths to trace.3 Nanotechnology threats were also considered difficult because they are small enough in size that they could remain dormant for 

extended periods, leaving great doubt as to when they were positioned. 

The last area in which we collected data via the formal Delphi method 

regarded the likelihood of attack. Here, definitions proved important insofar as we were interested in the likelihood of only very large destructive or 

catastrophic events. For this segment of the study, a “catastrophic” attack 

was considered one that “threatens national survival or eliminates the US 

Air Force’s ability to accomplish its mission.” A “destructive” attack was one 

that “seriously impacts the US’s ability to function or significantly degrades 

the US Air Force’s ability to perform its mission.” We asked the respondents to use a betting scheme that gave each of them $400 and even odds. 

We then instructed them to place bets on where the next destructive or 

catastrophic attack would occur, ignoring attacks below the destructive 

threshold for this exercise.

The results of this exercise are depicted in figure 12, which contains 

three patterns within the data that are worthy of explanation. First, the 

greatest perceived threats to the functioning of the United States or its Air 

Force were based on either biotechnology or cyberspace. The oracles believed that significant catastrophic risk to the nation and the Air Force 

resided in these two areas. The respondents believed this danger significant due to the relatively unprotected nature of the infrastructure against 

cyberspace attack and a very incomplete infrastructure to detect novel 

pathogens or viruses. Second, for three of the six technologies, the graph 

has a central “hump,” showing a greater probability of catastrophic or 

destructive attacks coming from groups than from individuals or nationstates. In all three cases—cyberspace, biotechnology, and nuclear weapons—

the oracles believed that the nation-states would be somewhat self-deterred 

due to the reputational issues previously mentioned. However, they also believed that very few individuals, if any, would be able to garner the resources 

single-handedly to create an attack of destructive or catastrophic scale. This 

created a curve for these three technologies that placed the maximum likelihood for attack at the group level. It should be noted that had we lowered the 

damage threshold of interest, it is likely that individuals would have scored 

much higher. Lastly, for the remaining three technologies (nanotechnology, 

directed energy, and space), nation-states were considered the most likely to 

attack catastrophically because we deemed it unlikely that even groups would 

have the resources to attack using these weapons on a massive scale.
36

Cyberspace

Biotechnology

Nanotechnology

Directed Energy

Space

Nuclear

Nation State Group Individual

Type of Actor

Average Bet Amount

Bets on Likelihood of Attack

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Figure 12. Likelihood of catastrophic attack: Delphi results

The study team then plotted all three of these Delphi results in threedimensional space to get a better picture of the threat space. Depicted in 

figure 13, this plot shows that cyberspace and biological threats are the 

most critical, with some nuclear and space issues worthy of highlighting. 

Figure 13. Delphi study threat data in 3-D
37

Notes

1. Norman Dalkey and Olaf Helmer, An Experimental Application of the Delphi Method 

to the Use of Experts (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, July 1962); Harold A. Linstone and Murray 

Turoff, eds., The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications (University Heights: New 

Jersey Institute of Technology, 2002).

2. William D. Rogers, “The Principles of Force, the Force of Principles,” in Right v. 

Might: International Law and the Use of Force, ed. Louis Henkin et al. (New York: Council 

on Foreign Relations, 1991), 95–108.

3. This type of thinking can also be found in Ali Karami, “Pandemics and Its 

Consequences for the Future of Asia,” in Imagining Asia in 2030: Trends, Scenarios and 

Alternatives, ed. Ajey Lele and Namrata Goswami (New Delhi, India: Academic Foundation 

Press, 2011), 153–65; and Angela Woodward, “Biological and Chemical Terrorism,” in Lele 

and Goswami, Imagining Asia in 2030, 323–35.

39

Chapter 5

Findings and Implications for the US Air Force

The purpose of this study was to discern the role of the US Air Force in 

deterring future technologies. The report examines the issues that the study 

team uncovered which are directly relevant to the Air Force. 

The study concluded that the answer to the fundamental thesis—how 

the Air Force should position itself to deter future threats—begins with its 

history. The Air Force and its forerunner, the Army Air Corps, pioneered 

flight. Initially, these flights were in lighter-than-air balloons and then in 

early aircraft. Airmen used these craft to see over the trenches in warfare, 

direct cannon, and gather the intelligence to allow for artillery attacks 

against the enemy.1

 In more recent years, the Air Force has led in the area 

of cyberspace. Since the service’s inception, reconnaissance has always 

been part of its core mission set.2

 In fact, of the targeting chain frequently 

referred to as find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess (F2T2EA), surveillance and reconnaissance are an integral part of five of its six steps. In short, 

diminishing the “fog of war” was at the heart of both the Army Air Corps’s 

creation and the Air Force’s becoming a separate service. It remains a crucial role for the service today.3

Transparency

The first main finding of this study is that increased transparency is necessary to facilitate proper attribution and early warning of attack. Transparency has three elements. The first is technical developments that aid in 

tracking people and objects through space and time. The second is ongoing 

innovation in this area, and the last is the advent of new command and 

control concepts.

With the development of the Internet, most data—public and private—

is archived for retrieval. Even when websites are updated or personal data 

removed, the old data is still available and can be retrieved.4

 The “Wayback 

Machine” enables a user to search through over 150 billion web pages archived from the early days of the Internet in 1996 until only a few months 

before the search is conducted. Should one wish to retrieve information 

from the past 90 days or so, Google’s “cached” page function takes over.5

The result is that anything which has been on the Internet can often still be 

found, enabling the searching for information not only across geographic 

space but also across time. These searches can synchronize raw data as well 

as pictorial information; they archive public (government) as well as private (personal) web postings. Data posted on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, 

or other social media sites are readily searchable if such information is 

made public. As mentioned above, the pictorial data can be fused to create 
40

three-dimensional images that can be viewed across the fourth dimension: 

time.6

 With well over 100 billion pictures already on the Internet, more 

than 1 trillion video downloads on YouTube, and several billion more pictures and videos being posted each month, the Internet is morphing into a 

window to our world that allows us to see anywhere at almost any time.7

 In 

short the technological developments are moving us toward transparency.

As this enormous data set becomes available on the Internet, new innovations will be necessary to use it. As mentioned above, nascent versions 

of some of the necessary algorithms already exist. Photosynth, a readily 

available Microsoft program, can fuse pictorial data, as most cell phones 

now tag the photos with a geographical and chronological stamp. Other 

algorithms are able to examine patterns of human behavior and flag for 

analysis those activities that are not like the others. Such algorithms can be 

useful for enabling business to foresee the next major consumer product or 

for enhancing security. One such set of algorithms has been developed as 

part of the Risk Assessment and Horizons Scanning system in Singapore. 

That city-state has developed an analyst-intensive process that involves environmental scanning for data, provides indicators of possible activity, enables the conduct of sentiment analysis, and helps with data fusion and 

analysis that leads to scenario development and the development of strategies. This system, first put in place in 2004, has undergone several upgrades 

since its inception. While not fully automated, the system provides “insights 

to emerging risks and opportunities with national security implications.”8

With a world of data available and the algorithms to flag events that may 

be indicators of risks, proper command and control can ensure that risks 

are properly assessed. Here the Air Force’s global command and control 

capability becomes the last element of a new transparency system. As data 

suggest that a risk may be emerging in a part of the world, the command 

and information exchange systems—in conjunction with well-trained 

leadership—enable the analysis, further research, and assessment of the 

risks as they emerge. 

The vision for how the transparency system would potentially operate is 

depicted in figure 14. The concept begins with the fusing of several streams 

of data. Intelligence data gathered through satellites, reconnaissance platforms, and other routine methods constitute the intelligence stream. The 

public data are published by news media, publishing houses, or governmental agencies that seek to make information available to the world. The 

“private” data may be a slight misnomer because this includes information 

on the Internet that is publically accessible, including public personal profiles that can be found in such places as Facebook or MySpace. Most users 

of these sites allow certain aspects of their profiles to be viewed by people 

not yet on their list of “friends.” 
41

Threat

Assessment

Track

Initiate Signal

Strike

Threat

Attribution

Threat

Characterization

Network Development

Active Shaping

Intel Data

Public Data

Private Data

Arrest

Impede

Warn

C

mo

m

unication

Figure 14. How transparency operates

These data are fused and processed using advanced algorithms that 

build on work already done. These algorithms will be designed to highlight 

or flag unusual patterns of behavior worthy of human analysis. Upon seeing such a signal, the analyst initiates tracking. The analyst drills into the 

data to determine if there is a concern that rises to the level of being a 

threat to US facilities or interests. If such a threat exists, then the analyst 

does additional analytical work with the data to attribute this threat to a 

specific actor or set of actors and then characterize that threat, including 

identifying its capabilities, operating procedures, and location. At that 

point, the government has many options available to deter a potential adversary. Depending on the nature of the threat and how early in the planning process an attack has been identified, the options may range from 

merely warning the individuals that they have already been discovered to 

potentially arresting or striking them if the threat they pose is more imminent. As these actions are taken, ripples or perturbations in the networks associated with these actors will likely appear within one or more of 

the streams of data. Additional fusing of data and repeating the above process will also flag other potentially dangerous actors associated with the 

initially discovered adversary for further analysis. Iterating this process 

will soon make obvious to actors who seek to hurt the United States that 

their likelihood of success has decreased, shifting the deterrence calculus 

in our favor. 

It is important to realize that this process leverages things the Air Force 

has historically done well. It is a leader in technology and has an entire 

laboratory directorate devoted to the creation of new sensor technologies.9

The Air Force was and remains the service responsible for reconnaissance 

and information gathering, and it has developed computerized operations 

centers where the fusion of these data can take place. In short the creation 
42

of transparency is an extension of extant Air Force missions, and the Air 

Force can and should lead in these areas.

From this proposed operational concept, this study concludes that 

transparency should be thought of as a second pillar of deterrence. From 

an Air Force standpoint, it has benefits very similar to those of air superiority in that it facilitates both attack and defense. More importantly to this 

analysis, transparency has a deterrent quality all its own. It is important to 

understand that transparency is about knowledge rather than control. 

Along with the ability to strike globally, transparency has the potential 

to radically alter adversaries’ deterrence calculus. If they believe that their 

actions will likely be discovered and attributed and that the punishment 

from the United States for an attempt to conduct catastrophic or destructive attacks on US interests will be severe, then the deterrence calculus 

shifts in favor of the attack being deterred. As a result of the development 

and proliferation of technologies that can create catastrophic effects over 

the next 10–20 years, this study concludes that by 2030, transparency and 

the associated concept of attribution will be essential. Moreover, as a requirement it will drive defense-procurement spending. 

To fully realize the potential of how transparency can assist in deterring 

future adversaries, the Air Force must address a coherent vision, scientific 

research and development, further development of concepts of operations, 

and potential organizational changes. The study participants believe that as 

the service that established the terms of reference for the use of cyberspace, 

the Air Force is better prepared to lead these efforts than our sister services. 

Time is short, so it is important that we do so now.

Unfortunately, transparency is a two-way street, and by itself it does not 

fully address all the aspects of deterrence by denial. It is likely that adversaries will have some level of transparency versus the United States. The 

study team pulled the picture in figure 15 from the Internet while the aircraft depicted were still in these parking spaces at Al Udeid Air Base in 

Qatar. At one end of the ramp are fully loaded B-1 aircraft. Had these 

weapons been detonated by an attack on the base, the other aircraft on the 

flight line—which included roughly one-fourth of the Air Force’s entire 

Airborne Warning and Control System and airborne command fleets—

would have been destroyed. Notice that all the data needed to carry out an 

attack, including the target elevation and coordinates, were readily available.

As a result of this transparency, we need a set of means to deny potential 

adversaries a chance to succeed, even when our forces or infrastructure is 

in known locations. As Bob Pape argues, one must attack a potential adversary’s strategy.10 In short we need to deny success. To do this, the research 

team argues, we need a second concept called “immunization” as well.
43

Imagery Date Sep 17, 2009 25°08’32.64°N 51°18’56.06°E

Coordinates

Loaded B-1s

Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar

2009 Google Earth Image

Figure 15. Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, on 17 September 2009. (The authors discovered the picture on the Internet using Google’s GeoEye in early 2010. The aircraft were still based at Al Udeid when the picture was found.)

Immunization

As it applies to the United States, immunization is analogous to an individual getting the annual influenza vaccine. It is a protective measure that 

reduces an attack’s effectiveness. Properly immunized against the flu, one 

can be coughed upon all winter long and not feel any adverse effects. Similarly, a nation-state properly immunized against attack will not suffer significant damage, even if an attack is launched against it.

For nation-states like the United States, this immunization process involves implementing physical safeguards around pieces of critical infrastructure that would protect them in the event of an attack. This involves 

creating backup methods of operation and functional resilience that result 

in little or no denigration to operations should an attack happen, creating 

strategies that enable the flexible selection of options to mitigate the effects 

of an attack. It also results in the development of cognitive resilience within 
44

the populace and the military, creating a mind-set in which, even if an attack 

occurs, there is not a disproportionate psychological reaction to the strike. 

As threats become more numerous and span increasingly large technological sets, immunization will require time, resources, and practice to attain. The methods of immunizing computer systems will be different than 

those of immunizing the populace against a biological pathogen. Nonetheless, the country must be prepared to do both as well as secure its interests 

from attacks of other types. If we can achieve a level of immunization that 

minimizes the gains realized by attacking the United States and its interests 

abroad, then the deterrence calculus shifts in favor of the defender, and the 

nation becomes more secure. 

To insure that immunization actions are considered in that calculus, 

demonstrations of these capabilities will likely be required. It is important 

to note that deterrence by denial is not new. It has been a part of deterrence 

theory for over 50 years, but it is more important now than it has been in 

the past. In short, we are entering a world where the proliferation and 

cheapening of potentially harmful technologies will impose costs on those 

nation-states that value protecting their populace.

As such, there are several implications for the Air Force. For instance, 

immunization will require people and materiel. It is not free. The Air Force 

has experience with hardening facilities from attack by several of these 

weapon types, and in many cases the methods of hardening against traditional attacks will work for the new threats. 

The panoply of new threats increases the requirements for the services 

to work together to create effective immunization and resilience. As we do 

this, we need to understand not only who is theoretically responsible for 

certain mission sets but also who is really going to accomplish them. For 

example, the US Army is required to defend US Air Force bases from 

guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and munitions. Yet, when the survey 

team conducted interviews with several senior US Army leaders and programmers regarding the steps the Army is taking to accomplish this task, 

they found little action being taken. For the Air Force, this means that 

making the assumption that the bases will be defended may carry with it 

serious risk.

These interdependences and risks, some of which have not been assessed, may force the reexamination of how the US Air Force presents 

forces. The current expeditionary method of operations using canvas as a 

protective material for personnel, command centers, computer systems, 

and operations centers is and will be ineffective. The range of threats 

emerging in the future is such that mere canvas as a protective layer will 

almost certainly be insufficient for the task. The Air Force will need to consider threats to its bases, logistics, and communications; moreover, it will 

need to examine new technologies and methods to shield aircraft, command 

centers, and personnel from attacks that may range from conventional 
45

guided munitions to electronic or pulsed electromagnetic attack. It will 

need to explore new and existing technologies to provide resiliency to aircraft, airfields, command and control facilities, and base infrastructure after 

attacks. Further, these same protection and resiliency considerations need 

to be extended to our assets in space. 

As the team looked across the implications of these future threats, it was 

acutely aware that these considerations challenge the myopia that has been 

allowed to permeate the Department of Defense over the last decade. Today the United States remains focused on unconventional conflict as a result 

of having spent the last 20 years involved in wars in the Middle East. While 

Pres. Barack Obama has announced timelines for handing over the region 

to the indigenous governments, these timelines are ill defined and may 

stretch across a number of years.

While it is perfectly appropriate for war fighters to concentrate on the 

battle they are currently fighting, the consequence of this concentration is 

that America’s military has been strictly focused on unconventional warfare 

in developing nations for a generation and will remain focused on this mission, at least in part, for several more years. While the threats in this study 

may come from terrorists, what is necessary to defeat this threat bears little 

resemblance to the types of combat in which we are now engaged—and we 

are not ready. Further, technology is changing at such a pace that those who 

fail to make a concerted effort to stay abreast of new developments find their 

thinking quickly rendered obsolete. The scope of the threats that we may face 

from the previously mentioned technologies is disturbing. 

The good news is that some of the Air Force’s greatest strengths have 

been a tradition of looking ahead, challenging current strategic assumptions, and embracing new technologies. This type of thinking is critical to 

the Air Force. Although the latter is not a named “core competency,” the 

Air Force and its predecessor, the Army Air Corps, have foreseen where 

technology was leading and what the next new strategic leaps would be. 

Recommendations

Based on the above research and findings, the study team has two sets of 

recommendations for the Air Force as it moves toward the 2030s. They 

deal with the development of a global vigilance strategy and the assessment 

and addressing of the Air Force’s immunization needs. Properly addressing 

these two broad areas will make attacks easier to attribute, adversary opportunities easier to deny, and adversary success harder to achieve. Collectively these tilt the deterrence calculus in favor of the United States, 

making it much less likely that the adverse and severe consequences of the 

threats discussed above will ever have to be endured. 
46

Notes

1. Franklin D. Margiotta, ed., “Artillery,” in Brassey’s Encyclopedia of Land Forces and 

Warfare (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1996), 99.

2. Today this is considered a subset of “information superiority” as one of the Air 

Force’s six distinctive capabilities. Department of the Air Force, “The Official Web Site of 

the U.S. Air Force,” 2012, accessed 22 May 2012, http://www.af.mil/main/welcome.asp.

3. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 117–21.

4. “Wayback Machine,” Internet Archive, n.d., accessed 24 April 2012, http://archive

.org/web/web.php.

5. Nancy Blachman and Jerry Peek, “Cached Pages,” Google Guide, 28 December 2011, 

accessed 24 April 2012, http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html. 

6. Microsoft’s “Photosynth,” free of charge on the Internet, is one such program that 

enables this fusing. See Microsoft Corporation, “Photosynth,” n.d., accessed 22 May 2012, 

http://photosynth.net. 

7. “Internet 2011 in Numbers,” Pingdom (blog), accessed 22 May 2012, http://royal

.pingdom.com/2012/01/17/internet-2011-in-numbers/. In most cases, the numbers for 

2011 were severalfold higher than the numbers for 2010.

8. Singapore is among the leaders in the development of this software. See Risk 

Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) Programme Office, Government of Singapore, 

“About Us: Vision, Mission & Values,” 13 January 2012, accessed 24 April 2012, http://app.

rahs.gov.sg/public/www/content.aspx?sid=2951; and RAHS Programme Office, Government 

of Singapore, “Organisation Structure Website,” 30 March 2012, accessed 24 April 2012, http://

app.rahs.gov.sg/public/www/home.aspx. 

9. Air Force Research Laboratory, “Sensors Directorate,” n.d., accessed 22 May 2012, 

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/ry/.

10. Robert Anthony Pape, Bombing to Win (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 

1–34.
47

Chapter 6

A Global Vigilance Strategy for 2035

To develop a global vigilance strategy for 2035, the Air Force must first 

reestablish itself as a leader in cyber warfare with increased research and 

development of equipment as well as increased training. This is essential to 

handling threats that emerge in cyberspace and echoes recommendations 

in the 2010 vector statement of Gen Norton Schwartz, former Air Force 

chief of staff.1

 The service, however, needs to broaden beyond mere electronic warfare and become a leader in the field of intelligence, surveillance, 

and reconnaissance. In these areas, the Air Force is the traditional lead 

service and should be again.

While the Air Force has made great strides in integrating remotely piloted 

aircraft (RPA) and space and cyberspace operations, this integration needs 

to move toward completion. Real-time sharing, fusing, and cross-cueing 

from information in each of these realms must be achieved. 

As General Schwartz recommended in July 2010, the study also found 

and recommended that the Title 10 Futures Wargames should focus on 

vetting new technologies, innovative ideas, and future concepts of operations and finding novel ways to institutionally integrate RPAs, space, cyberspace, 

and real-time data fusion into new ways of conducting business. This creates 

a prerequisite that all Title 10 Futures Wargames be fully and completely 

staffed and run by visionary leaders who are knowledgeable about emerging technologies and their potential capabilities. This will involve much 

more careful selection of game players and senior mentors than has been 

the case in the past. Only by ensuring that those creating, playing, and running the games are conversant in these technologies and their potential can 

one create the new concepts of operations that will be needed to propel the 

Air Force into the future.

As the global vigilance strategy is developed and unfolds over time, the 

Air Force should constantly reexamine its organizational structures to determine if or when changes are needed to optimize the integration of global 

vigilance into all facets of its operations. While reluctant to posit precisely 

what these changes may be, the study team unanimously believed that existing organizational structures would be inadequate to handle transparency at the necessary levels in the 2030 time frame and that the Air Force 

leadership would need to examine organizational structures as the transparency strategy evolved over time.

Lastly, the study team, upon its outbrief, recommended that an informal 

interagency study group be formed to define the capabilities, capacities, 

organization, authorities, and systems needed to fully enable transparency. 

As this study’s details became more widely known and coordinated, the 

National Security Staff became aware of and began to work on some of the 
48

issues embedded in this report. Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8) is 

an outgrowth of the National Security Staff ’s efforts in these matters. As a 

result of PPD-8, an interagency group has already been formed and was 

slated to present its conclusions to the president in 2012. This study believes that interagency cooperation and coordination will be necessary to 

optimally use precious taxpayer-provided resources to achieve a global 

vigilance strategy for 2035. 

Immunization

As previously mentioned, because potential adversaries in the future 

will have access to many of the same transparency-creating technologies 

that we will have, implementing the concept called “immunization” is necessary. To do this, one must have a full assessment of immunization needs 

and understand where the service is already taking grave risks.

Unfortunately, a full assessment of all the risks the Air Force is taking with 

regard to its basing, current and future adversary threat laydowns, shortfalls 

in other services’ efforts (such as the lack of any funding for defense against 

guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and munitions), and interagency issues 

(such as the lack of protection for the national critical infrastructure) has 

never been done. This leaves the Air Force in a position where the problem 

set itself remains inadequately defined. Our recommendations, therefore, 

take a problem-solution format.

The first—and immediate—step is to fully define this problem. Several 

Air Force missions in the future will be at risk due to the variety of threats 

that potential adversaries will field and due to our own as well as other 

agencies’ and services’ underfunding of needed capabilities. Increased 

transparency will mean that the locations of our forces will be known to 

our adversaries. The technologies previously discussed will also be in their 

hands. This combination places our combat capability at grave risk and will 

reduce our ability to achieve surprise. In an era of precisely targeted conventional missile attacks, directed energy weaponry, and cyber-domain 

warfare, our doctrine of operating from bare bases in an expeditionary 

manner may put us at unacceptable risk in some theaters. Add potential 

biological attack and attacks to our communication and space assets, and 

one begins to paint a multidimensional trade space that has never been 

fully mapped. The Air Force needs to create and understand this risk map 

to make mission risk visible, based on our own funding outlays and those 

of other services, agencies, or allies upon which we depend. 

Only when this risk analysis is complete can we target research and development in the laboratory system to address the key vulnerabilities. Research and development to improve our ability to harden combat systems, 

personnel deployment locations, and support infrastructure will be needed 

to ensure that the Air Force is able to survive to operate in future combat 
49

environments. This research will likely need to target new material science 

and communications technologies to deny adversaries the ability to disable 

the Air Force. 

Only by creating an Air Force that is capable of operating without significant degradation in the face of a potential adversary’s attack can we 

deny him success. If we are able to achieve this level of immunization, then 

an adversary’s gains to be won by attacking become so trivial that a rational 

actor will choose not to strike in the first place. This is part of how deterrence succeeds. 

Issues for Other Departments

Because of the breadth of challenges that will confront the United States 

in the 2030s, this is much more than a Department of Defense problem. 

There are issues for the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Commerce, as a minimum. 

There are likely others this study has not stumbled upon as well.

The DHS is responsible for the defense of our national infrastructure and 

air transport system. Consequently it needs to understand the potential impact that directed energy will have on our electrical and banking systems. 

Not to be forgotten is that while adversaries can be deterred, our sun 

cannot. The good news is that when the sun attacks (e.g., with solar flares), 

it gives warning, and the protection of the national infrastructure with 

warning is a rather trivial problem, assuming a plan is in place to do it.2

Sadly, no such plan exists, and no agreed-upon threshold to take action in 

response to solar flares exists. While the Department of Commerce looks 

at weather effects and NASA looks at solar flares, there are no means by 

which their respective analyses are combined to make decisions on how to 

protect the utility systems upon which we all depend. Until there are, we 

will all remain at risk of a major flare destroying our electrical grid in a 

manner that could keep the lights out for years. 

The DHS is also responsible for airline safety. Nanotechnological explosives will soon increase the potential for very small amounts of a substance 

to create very large explosions. While there is substantial public backlash 

against limitations such as the three-ounce-bottle limits on commercial 

aircraft, this problem is about to become 5- to 10-fold worse. The DHS will 

need to develop methods of detecting which compounds can explode and 

which cannot—and further, detect these when they may be chemically new 

materials or something just nanoengineered in an adversary’s laboratory. 

The Department of Transportation has this same requirement but with respect to our major highways and bridges. The destruction of all bridges 

that cross the Missouri-Mississippi river system with nanoexplosives is 

something that must be guarded against as well.
50

The one potential extinction-level event discussed above is biological 

attack. The Blue Horizons III study recommended a major project to enable rapid detection and decoding of new genomic structures along with 

the ability to quickly prototype and produce vaccines. We stated then and 

reiterate now that a major project is needed on biogenetics to ready the nation 

and the world to rapidly respond to the outbreak of a novel virus, whether 

man-made or a natural mutation, within a matter of hours instead of the 

nearly one year it took to develop a vaccine for the H1N1 influenza in 2010. 

This study concludes that this recommendation remains valid and must be 

pursued. However, its implementation lies within the purview of the Centers 

for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. 

In short the future technologies studied have the potential to threaten 

our lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure. Many aspects of protecting these 

do not lie in Title 10 and must be addressed by the responsible agencies. If 

they fail to do so, then our ability to deter an adversary by denial may exist 

within our Air Force but not within our nation as a whole. Deterrence is a 

team sport. It is one that all the federal agencies must play together.

Notes

1. Norton A. Schwartz, “CSAF Vector 2010,” 4 July 2010, accessed 24 May 2012, http://

www.afa.org/grl/pdfs/CSAFVECTOR2010b.pdf..

2. To protect transformers and generators from the electric currents generated inside 

power lines by a solar flare, one need only disconnect them from the grid—and need not do 

so elegantly. Power companies almost always have spare line; they almost never have spare 

transformers or generators. Thus, even quickly achieved and sloppy cuts to the lines can be 

repaired later.
51

Chapter 7

Summary

The Center for Strategy and Technology was asked to examine how the 

US Air Force could best deter attacks in space and cyberspace or attacks 

using biotechnology, nanotechnology, directed energy, and/or nuclear 

weapons. Looking toward the year 2035, CSAT discovered that these 

threats create a potentially dangerous future for the United States and 

many of our allies and partners around the world. 

This study concludes that the threats in these six areas range from very 

dangerous to the potentially catastrophic, with the nexus between bio- and 

nanotechnologies holding the gravest risk of all. The study finds that little 

has been or is being done to protect American citizens or their infrastructure from these threats but also finds that technologies to mitigate these 

threats either already exist or can be developed with time. 

It also finds that deterrence theory, as originally constructed, is still 

valid. The basic theory will hold in the future, but the way it must be applied will change. New technologies are susceptible to being deterred 

through denial not merely through retribution, as was the case with nuclear 

weapons during the cold war. As such, new strategies—specifically in the 

areas of transparency and immunization—are required. 

In summary we have shown that deterrence is based on changing adversaries’ assessments of whether the gains to be won from an attack outweigh 

the risks they incur. To do this, one can affect both sides of the deterrence 

equation by denying adversaries the opportunity and tools to initiate a successful attack, ensuring that the gains to be won are small, and punishing 

the attackers for the attack once it is launched. To achieve the capability to 

deter by denial and by punishment in the 2030s, the Air Force will need a 

new vision for global vigilance and a new strategy for immunization. To 

achieve the latter, we will need to map the risks that are inherent in our 

systems and doctrine and begin researching and developing work-arounds 

to mitigate these risks. If we do these things, then the adverse consequences 

and the likelihood of attack using modern conventional and nuclear systems 

in the 2030s can be significantly reduced, and the threats we fear most need 

never materialize.

Achieving this outcome requires cooperation across the whole of government. While the Air Force has an important role to play and will inevitably 

lead in some areas, it has neither the structure nor the mission to accomplish this task alone. Deterrence is a team sport, and every cabinet agency 

has a position to play on this team. Only when our nation acts in unity will 

it reach the common goal of deterring these new technologies. 

53

Abbreviations

AU Air University

COIL chemical oxygen iodine laser

CSAF Air Force chief of staff

CSAT Center for Strategy and Technology

DHS Department of Homeland Security

EMP electromagnetic pulse phenomenon

F2T2EA find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess

GPS Global Positioning System

ISP specific impulse

ISR intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance

OODA observe, orient, decide, and act

PPD presidential policy directive

RPA remotely piloted aircraft

S&P Standard & Poor’s stock market index

SCADA supervisory control and data acquisition

UN United Nations

55

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Courville, Shane. Air Force and the Cyberpsace Mission: Defending the Air 

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Geis, John P., II, Christopher J. Kinnan, Ted Hailes, Harry A. Foster, and David 

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history-of-russias.html.
63

Center for Strategy and Technology

The Center for Strategy and Technology (CSAT) was established at the 

Air War College in 1996. Its purpose is to engage in long-term strategic 

thinking about technology and its implications for US national security. 

CSAT focuses on education, research, and publications that support the 

integration of technology into national strategy and policy. Its charter is to 

support faculty and student research; publish research through books, articles, and occasional papers; fund a regular program of guest speakers; 

and engage with collaborative research with US and international academic institutions. As an outside funded activity, CSAT enjoys the support 

of institutions in the strategic, scientific, and technological communities.

Essential to this program is establishing relationships with organizations in the Air Force and other Department of Defense agencies and identifying potential topics for research projects. Research conducted under 

the auspices of CSAT is published as Occasional Papers and disseminated 

to senior military and political officials, think tanks, educational institutions, and other interested parties. Through these publications, CSAT 

hopes to promote the integration of technology and strategy in support of 

US national security objectives.

For further information on the Center for Strategy and Technology, 

please contact

Col Thomas D. “T-Mac” McCarthy, Director

Harry A. Foster, Deputy Director

Theodore C. Hailes, Chair for Force Transformation, Air University

Grant T. Hammond, Deputy Director, Global Strike

George J. Stein, Deputy Director, Cyberspace & Information Operations

Lt Col Christopher A. Bohn, Chief Scientist

Air War College

325 Chennault Circle

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112

(334) 953-6996/6460/2985
64

Titles in the Occasional Paper Series

1

Reachback Operations for Air Campaign Planning and Execution

Scott M. Britten, September 1997

2

Lasers in Space: Technological Options for Enhancing US Military 

Capabilities

Mark E. Rogers, November 1997

3

Non-Lethal Technologies: Implications for Military Strategy

Joseph Siniscalchi, March 1998

4

Perils of Reasoning by Historical Analogy: Munich, Vietnam and the 

American Use of Force since 1945

Jeffrey Record, March 1998

5

Lasers and Missile Defense: New Concepts for Space-Based and Ground 

Based Laser Weapons

William H. Possel, July 1998

6

Weaponization of Space: Understanding Strategic and Technological 

Inevitabilities

Thomas D. Bell, January 1999

7

Legal Constraints on Information Warfare

Mark Russell Shulman, March 1999

8

Serbia and Vietnam: A Preliminary Comparison of U.S. Decisions to Use 

Force

Jeffrey Record, May 1999
65

9

Airborne and Space-Based Lasers: An Analysis of Technological and 

Operational Compatibility

Kenneth W. Barker, June 1999

10

Directed Energy and Fleet Defense: Implications for Naval Warfare

William J. McCarthy, May 2000

11

High Power Microwaves: Strategic and Operational Implications for 

Warfare

Eileen M. Walling, May 2000

12

Reusable Launch Vehicles and Space Operations

John E. Ward Jr., May 2000

13

Cruise Missiles and Modern War: Strategic and Technological

Implications

David J. Nicholls, May 2000

14

Deeply Buried Facilities: Implications for Military Operations

Eric M. Sepp, May 2000

15 

Technology and Command: Implications for Military Operations in the 

Twenty-First Century

William B. McClure, July 2000

16

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Implications for Military Operations

David Glade, July 2000

17

Computer Networks and Information Warfare: Implications for Military 

Operations

David J. Gruber, July 2000
66

18

Failed States and Casualty Phobia: Implications for Force Structure and

Technology Choices

Jeffrey Record, October 2000

19

War as We Knew It: The Real Revolution in Military Affairs/Understanding 

Paralysis in Military Operations

Jan S. Breemer, December 2000

20

Using Lasers in Space: Laser Orbital Debris Removed and Asteroid 

Deflection

Johanthon W. Dampbell, December 2000

21

Weapons for Strategic Effect: How Important Is Technology?

Collin S. Gray, January 2001

22

U.S. Army Apache Helicopters and U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Forces:

Implications for Halting Military Operations

Brad Mason, June 2001

23

The End of Secrecy? Military Competitiveness in the Age of Transparency

Beth M. Kasper, August 2001

24

Space-Based Global Strike: Understanding Strategic and Military 

Implications

Larry G. Sills, August 2001

25

Precision Engagement at the Strategic Level of War: Guiding Promise or 

Wishful Thinking

Timothy J. Sakulich, December 2001

26

Infrared Systems for Tactical Aviation: An Evolution in Military Affairs?

George B. Hept, January 2002
67

27

Unmanned Undersea Vehicles and Guided Missile Submarines: 

Technological and Operational Synergies

Edward A. Johnson Jr., February 2002

28

Attack Operations for Missile Defense 

Merrick E. Krause, May 2002

29

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Micro-Air Vehicles in the Service of Air Force 

Missions

Arthur F. Huber II, July 2002

30

Sustained Space Superiority: A National Strategy for the United States

Larry J. Schaefer, August 2002

31 

Hyperspectral Imagery: Warfighting through a Different Set of Eyes

Paul J. Pabich, October 2002

32

Directed Energy Weapons on the Battlefield: A New Vision for 2025

John P. Geis II, April 2003

33

Homeland Security and the Coast Guard: Postured for Technology 

Improvements

Arthur C. Walsh, June 2003

34

Non-Lethal Weapons: Setting our Phasers on Stun? Potential Strategic 

Blessings and Curses of Non-Lethal Weapons on the Battlefield

Erik L. Nutley, August 2003

35

Aircrew Performance Cutting-Edge Tech

Kris M. Belland, September 2003
68

36

Centralized Control with Decentralized Execution: Never Divide the Fleet?

Daniel F. Baltrusaitis, June 2004

37

The Decision Maker’s Guide to Robust, Reliable and Inexpensive Access to 

Space

Gary N. Henry, July 2004

38

Global Mobility: Anywhere, Anytime, Any Threat? Countering the 

MANPADS Challenge

Jacqueline D. van Ovost, December 2005

39

Strategies for Defeating Commercial Imagery Systems

Stephen Latchford, December 2005

40–51

Netted Bugs and Bombs: Implications for 2010

Edited by Marsha J. Kwolek. December 2005

Part I: Network Centric Operations: Promises and Pitfalls

Network Warfare Operations: Unleashing the Potential

Richard A. Lipsey

Network-Centric Operations: Challenges and Pitfalls

Eric E. Silbaugh

Network-Enable Precision Guided Munitions

Benjamin F. Koudelka Jr.

Lowering the High Ground: Using Near-Space Vehicles for Persistent C3ISR

Andrew J. Knoedler

Part II: UAVs in 2010: Lean and Lethal

Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: SEAD and EW for the Future

James C. Horton

Small Power: The Role of Micro and Small UAVs in the Future

James M. Abatti

Pesky Critters

Kirk M. Kloepple
69

Pandora’s Box Opened Wide: UAVs Carrying Genetic Weapons

Daryl J. Hauck

Part III: Silver Bullets in Search of a Six Shooter

Perfecting War: Searching for the Silver Bullet

Eric J. Schnitzer

Who Pushes the Pickle Button?

John E. Marselus

Leveraging Simulation against the F-16 Flying Training Gap

Shaun R. McGrath

Electronic Pulse Threats in 2010

Colin R. Miller

52

Ground Truth: The Implications of Joint Interdependence for Air and 

Ground Operations

L. Ross Roberts, March 2006

53

“Heads, Not Tails”: How To Best Engage Theater Ballistic Missiles?

Ronald C. Wiegand, February 2006

54

Transcendental Terrorism and Dirty Bombs: Radiological Weapons Threat 

Revisited

Chad Brown, February 2006

55

International Armament Cooperative Programs: Benefits, Liabilities, and 

Self-inflicted Wounds—the JSF as a Case Study

Stephen G. DiDomenico, February 2006

56

War without Oil: A Catalyst for True Transformation

Michael J. Hornitschek, May 2006

57–59

Streamlining DOD Acquisition: Balancing Schedule with Complexity

Edited by James Rothenflue and Marsha J. Kwolek, September 2006
70

A System as the Enemy: A Doctrinal Approach to Defense Force 

Modernization

Benjamin A. Drew

Impact of Weapons Systems Complexity on Systems Acquisition

Robert A. Dietrick

Faster Is Better . . . Can the USAF Acquisition Process be SAIV’D?

James L. Chittenden

60

The Seductive Effects of an Expeditionary Mindset

Michael Arnold, February 2007

61

The Air Force in SILICO—Computational Biology in 2025

Christopher Coates, November 2007

62

Biofuels: An Alternative to U.S. Air Force Petroleum Dependency

Mark S. Danigole, December 2007

63

Air Force and the Cyberspace Mission: Defending the Air Force’s Computer 

Network in the Future

Shane P. Courville, December 2007

64

Next Generation Nanotechnology Assembly Fabrication Methods: A Trend 

Forecast

Vincent T. Jovene Jr., January 2008

65

Blue Horizons II: Future Capabilities and Technologies for the Air Force in 

2030 

John P. Geis II, Christopher J. Kinnan, Ted Hailes, Harry A. Foster, and 

David Blanks, July 2009

66

Resurgent Russia in 2030: Challenge for the USAF

Theodore C. Hailes, Ronald Buckley, David Blanks, Mark Butler, Phillip 

Preen, and Michael Tarlton, September 2009
71

67

Failed State 2030: Nigeria—A Case Study

Christopher J. Kinnan, Daniel B. Gordon, Mark D. DeLong, Douglas W. 

Jaquish, and Robert S. McAllum, February 2011

68

Discord or “Harmonious Society”? China in 2030

John P. Geis II, Scott E. Caine, Edwin F. Donaldson, Blaine D. Holt, and 

Ralph A. Sandfry, February 2011

69

Finding the Shape of Space

Christopher C. Shannon, Scott J. Scheppers, Dustin P. Ziegler, Brian C. 

McDonald, David Suh Hoon Menke, John P. Geis II, Amanda S. Birch, 

and Tosha N. Meridith, July 2011