CR Mohan's Blog

Introduction 1.  In the previous two Tech Juice Articles of the 2511 series, we discussed the trajectory of equipment profiles of armed forces if the Conventionalist and the Technophile had their way.  Let's examine the mind of the Shadow Warrior (a third type of General officer) of a different mettle.   2.  Shadow warriors are generals who have risen from special forces and intelligence agencies. Just to give you a flavour of the way they think, have a look at the cover and contents of this book by Gen Sean McFate who started his life as a paratrooper and officer of the US army 82 airborne division, left the service became a defence contractor (aka mercenary company owner) and ended up as a a professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service after a PhD.   Gen Stanley McChrystal, the JSOC commander in Iraq and of Al Zarqawi fame, has written a glowing tribute to this book.   3.  Th...

Introduction 1.  In Tech Juice Part III of this series, I discussed the impact of disruptive technologies on equipment profiles of the armed forces from a conventionalist's point of view.  In this article, I will cover the view of the Technophile and in the next, that of the Shadow Warrior. 2.   The technophile, wants to change the armed forces in line with Industry Revolution 4.0 technologies. They bat for robotised tanks, unmanned combat systems which are underwater, on surface, in the air/space, AI enabled cyber protection, network management, war gaming, quantum keys, space networks for C4ISR (Communications, Computers, Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), swarm drone soldiers etc. The lists and possibilities are endless.   3.   For the technophile, everything is robotised. Modern war is a war with robots and computers. According to the technophile, the unmanned combat air vehicle replaces the manned fighter, robotic ta...

Introduction 1. During my school days, I was deeply impressed with my  English teacher, Mr Julius Paul Karikalan. He was very keen that we all fell in love with Shakespeare. As a young boy, I was trained to play the role of Julius Caesar for the school day. Cassius Clay, a lean and famished-looking guy, was the first courtier to drive a knife into Caesar when the court decides to do so for the good of Rome. Julius Caesar had earlier said the following to Mark Antony (probably his only true friend):-  2.  At the end of this series of Tech Juice articles, I do not want some established players in the military equipment business and planners of regiments raised from them, to feel this way about me.   While I do think a lot, I am not thin, I sleep well and I am not dangerous.  The future battlefield is difficult to predict particularly at this time of rapid technological change.   It is, however, dangerous not to try and prepare for an uncertain futur...

Background 1. ChatGPT and other Pre-trained Transformer solutions have now become ubiquitous with a chatbot-like interface, taking in questions in conversational style (like Alexa or Siri),  and providing intelligent responses formatted for direct use. When Microsoft linked this with their browser, they started an AI war with Google.  2.  Google was forced to bring up its version of AI to stay ahead of the stock market, and Bard was revealed to the world. Unlike ChatGPT, Bard has already digested the information on the internet and kept incrementally learning. It had already formed a human-like model to transform knowledge into intelligence and respond uniquely as if it were a person. Bard shocked audiences around the world with replies to queries like "summarize the New Testament" or "translate the summary into Latin" etc.   3.  Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway won a bet by writing a six word story "For sale.  Baby Shoes.  Never worn".  ...