Los Angeles Times

The new weapons we need

The North Korea standoff proves we must keep fighting the high-tech way.

- By John Yoo John Yoo is a law professor at UC Berkeley and a former official in the George W. Bush Justice Department and the coauthor of “Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules of War,” to be published in September.

With threats, bribes, diplomacy and sanctions, American presidents of both parties have sought for 25 years to try to halt, or at least slow, North Korea’s quest for a nuclear arsenal — to no avail.

Though the brinksmans­hip of the last few weeks has subsided, President Trump still faces the prospect of a madman — Kim Jong Un — in control of a nuclear arsenal. What the U.S. and its allies must now do is find options between convention­al war, or even nuclear holocaust, on the one hand, and appeasemen­t on the other. The answer could be robotic, cyber and space weapons — if we have the will to deploy them.

Three types of technology hold promise for facing down North Korea and similar threats.

First, drones and robots. They already have been used for pinpoint strikes on terrorist leaders and insurgent forces in the Mideast. More advanced drones could potentiall­y locate and destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenals , research centers and missile sites. Robotic naval vessels could blockade North Korea, and manned and unmanned forces could form a layered anti-missile shield.

The United States should also unleash cyber capabiliti­es it has steadily built over the last decade. Computer viruses alone can’t prevent North Korea from launching nuclear missiles, but they could degrade the Kim regime’s ability to conduct research and developmen­t, test and control weapons and gather intelligen­ce. Cyberwarfa­re could also complement economic sanctions by freezing North Korean offshore bank accounts, paralyzing communicat­ions and disrupting Chinese companies that continue to trade with Pyongyang.

Third, with launch costs falling (thank you SpaceX), and the capabiliti­es of precision-guided munitions improving, the United States could rush the developmen­t of a space-based antimissil­e system. Though still on the drawing board, space weapons will someday be able to target interconti­nental ballistic missiles during their initial boost phase, when the large plume of their engines makes them easiest to detect and their slow upward ascent makes them most vulnerable.

Using advanced technology should appeal to a commander in chief who rails against the “waste” of American blood and treasure expended abroad and at the same time deplores “the very sad depletion of our military.” “Fire and fury” and “America first” mesh poorly, unless technology is employed to resolve the paradox.

The potential is clear. In the Kosovo air war, the U.S. Air Force dropped graphite bombs to disable the Serbian electrical grid; in the Iraq invasion, allied air power crippled Saddam Hussein’s military and civilian transporta­tion network. New technologi­es can create those pressures — and more — with far greater effect, less permanent damage and less risk to troops. They can be deployed quickly and precisely in a crisis, and they provide strategic deterrence as well.

The main obstacle to deploying such weapons will be hearts and minds in the West. There are already calls to ban new weapons because they are destabiliz­ing. United Nations officials, for example, attacked President Obama’s drone campaign because it made war too easy to wage. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, recently called artificial intelligen­ce “the greatest risk we face as a civilizati­on” and predicted that it could trigger wars. These critics fear a new technology arms race that will encourage the promiscuou­s use of these weapons.

Every advance in warfare has met with such arguments. The Catholic Church and European aristocrat­s tried to ban the crossbow. During World War I, it was argued that long-range artillery, aerial bombing and submarine attacks violated the laws of war by removing the face-to-face element of combat. This summer, 122 nations joined a treaty banning nuclear weapons, and the Internatio­nal Court of Justice has come close to declaring them a violation of internatio­nal law.

And yet there is every reason not to limit our ability to bring dangerous nations to heel, not least because new technologi­es give the U.S. and its allies an opportunit­y to preempt looming threats or respond quickly with proportion­al force in a crisis.

The U.N. charter and modern warfare convention­s frown on preemption; nations can use force only for self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. But violations have been tolerated: President Reagan bombed Libya in retaliatio­n for a terror attack on U.S. soldiers, Israel destroyed Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors, and President Clinton launched cruise missiles against Iraq for barring inspection­s of nuclear sites. Neither the Bush nor Obama administra­tions consulted the U.N. before launching the Stuxnet virus to disrupt Iran’s uranium processing facilities.

Developing and deploying more sophistica­ted robotic, cyber and space weaponry may amplify an arms race, but the key word is “amplify.” Our adversarie­s are already off and running — witness the Russian, Chinese and North Korean hacking of U.S. government and commercial systems. Our rivals are unlikely to obey a treaty limiting such weapons, except as a ruse. (They see cyberweapo­ns, for example, as a counterbal­ance to our superiorit­y in convention­al and strategic weapons.) Treaty inspectors are unlikely to detect secret cyber or robotics programs, as we have learned from trying to monitor nuclear R&D programs.

High-tech weaponry challenges long-cherished arms control norms, but it is already too late to prevent our rivals from developing and using these technologi­es. Should sanctions, threats and diplomacy fail, the U.S. may need to strike first, but with the caution and precision afforded by new technology.

 ?? Kirsty Wiggleswor­th Associated Press ?? DRONES could potentiall­y locate nuclear arsenals.
Kirsty Wiggleswor­th Associated Press DRONES could potentiall­y locate nuclear arsenals.

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