Cyberbeast
History moves as fast as its weapons. So if you want to understand the power of technology, study the art of war.
In the 1930s, military strategist General J.F.C. Fuller predicted that “future armies would be surrounded by swarms of motorized guerillas, irregulars, or regular troops making use of the multitude of civilian motorcars that would be available.”
War is no longer characterized by two armies facing off in a field. Modern warfare is everywhere, prolifically recorded, but also nowhere, guided by code and remote control.
Fuller was pivotal in advancing tanks and the strategies of armored warfare, combat between highly advanced military vehicles that combined infantry, artillery, and armor.
Last week, Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov stormed Telegram to announce that he had been gifted a Tesla Cybertruck from Elon Musk himself. This claim was automatically questionable. Then the warlord insisted that the vehicle, which had been equipped with a gun turret, was combat-ready.
“Based on such excellent characteristics, the Cybertruck will soon be sent to the area of the special military operation, where it will be in demand in the appropriate conditions.”.
Kadryov, whom the New Yorker
described as “the Putin of Chechnya” and the “Chechnyan Dragon” and who is included in a book titled “Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction,” has ruled the Russian Republic of Chechnya for nearly two decades.
He added: “It’s not for nothing that they call this a cyberbeast. I’m sure that this beast will bring plenty of benefits to our troops.”
Cyber ISIS
ISIS rebranded Toyota pickups; will the Russian-Ukranian war do the same for Tesla Cybertrucks?
Not likely. While the Cybertruck’s stainless steel exoskeleton can stop a bullet, it taps out at 9mm, so it certainly can’t handle anti-tank ammunition or IEDs.
But what if it could?
Shortly after this bizarre news broke, we heard about Sting, a military Cybertruck ready for the apocalypse. Mysterious military contractor Archimedes Defense teamed up with Unplugged Performance, a company offering performance upgrades for the Tesla Cybertruck, to create the INVINCIBLE Tesla Cybertruck.
The truck is part of Unplugged Performance’s
Up.Fit wing, which engineers upgrades for Tesla fleet vehicles. The company’s goal is to equip the next generation of law enforcement vehicles, from patrol to transport and tactical.
The companies claim that these upgrades can protect against “14.5mm heavy machine gun rounds” and “IED/mine protection.”
As a side note, a friend of mine bought a Cybertruck, and it is awesome. I wouldn’t want to roll into war with it, mostly because I’m not interested in the soldier’s life, but having been inside a Cybertruck, I can say that it would probably make a great war machine.
Call of Cyber Duty
Like many Millennials, I grew up playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a sub-series of quite possibly the highest-selling video game franchise of all time. Over the years, the game has featured multiple vehicles that resemble the Tesla Cybertruck. With names like Warthog, Ripper, and Goliath, they bore the angular exoskeleton of Elon Musk’s futuristic invention.
Most media consumption is no longer fixated, and the subscription model has allowed tech companies to release unfinished products. As Napoleon put it, “Aptitude for war is aptitude for movement,” where a military’s power is measured “by its mass multiplied by its speed.”
“The tri-motor version can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.9 seconds, which is incredibly fast for a vehicle of its size. It also boasts a range of up to 500 miles on a single charge.”
This is similar to the concept of hyperreality, the idea that representation precedes reality, that the map precedes the land it illustrates.
The Industrial Age brought about the ability to multiply images. There’s too much information to form an absolute understanding of reality, so we rely on the media to deliver a replication that we accept as the truth. As a result, we lose touch with the actual world, the world before representations.
These representations become more important than reality, in part because they defy death or seem to. They elongate moments that we wish we could remain in forever.
There are no gaps or spaces in the digital world.
Cyberwar
In 2017, Elon Musk warned that AI could cause World War III; he signed a letter with 116 specialists from 26 countries warning that “the use of autonomous weapons could usher in the ‘third revolution in warfare.’”
“Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend,” the letter warns. “These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close.”
The military is one of the largest funders and adopters of AI technology. Yet the state has become tangled up with industry. This whole situation is futuristic.
The automation of war has led to its fragmentation. This has happened roughly since the 18th century, when Napoleon first used spy balloons. The use of total war set the stage for the world wars that took place in the next century, along with the global scale of the conflict.
War is no longer characterized by two armies facing off in a field. Modern warfare is everywhere, prolifically recorded, but also nowhere, guided by code and remote control.
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