It must begin its search in a genealogy of knowledge. Speed is thus the nexus dimension, warfare's third dimension is the surface of the postmodern battlefield. Already an impending potential in World War I, the politicizing of the spatial in geopolitics did not take long. In contemporary warfare the axis of battle shifts from territorial, economic, and material gains to immaterial, perceptual fields. The distribution of territory is outmoded.
Global space is transformed into cyber-space.
Only there can security and comfort be found. Cyber-war is thus neither politics authenticated by technical reproduction nor the contest of material referents, but rather the prosecution of the field of perception. J. Peter Burgess teaches philosophy at the University of Oslo. He is completing a dissertation on Hegel's philosophy of history in the department of History of Ideas at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.