The Kill Chain
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4.5 • 158 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might.
For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons that it fights with, have been uncontested. That old reality, however, is rapidly deteriorating. America's traditional sources of power are eroding amid the emergence of new technologies and the growing military threat posed by rivals such as China. America is at grave risk of losing a future war.
As Christian Brose reveals in this urgent wake-up call, the future will be defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies that are revolutionizing global industries and are now poised to overturn the model of American defense. This fascinating, if disturbing, book confronts the existential risks on the horizon, charting a way for America's military to adapt and succeed with new thinking as well as new technology. America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as "the kill chain." Examining threats from China, Russia, and elsewhere, The Kill Chain offers hope and, ultimately, insights on how America can apply advanced technologies to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace
Customer Reviews
Important Read
I really enjoy the thoughtfulness and elaboration of the book. It brings to light a lot of systematic issues that have come to exist in the military and defense industry. But, PLEASE add the chapter titles rather than the "Track 1," it throws everything off.
Skip to Chapter 11
The ideas in the book are interesting but the delivery is deeply flawed. The brief mentions of Russia haven’t aged well, due to their recent debacle in Ukraine. The premise of the book is largely that China will attack and we will lose when that happens. There are few mentions at all about WHY China would attack the U.S. There is a weak theory presented that they would do so to recover their 1000+ year supremacy. That idea is absurd. The author shows his lack of research by categorizing China’s “superior” military but it is known to be a largely throw-away force. Their ships, tanks, aircraft, and missiles are flawed and that is widely known. Additionally, there is no mention of the American taxpayer and their interest in having value instead of the author’s concept of throw away equipment. His idea of a “military internet of things” shows an enormous lack of knowledge of how vulnerable the world’s internet of things actually are. All of this is fair for the author as he is a policy wonk with no experience in the military. While Senator John McCain was certainly an American hero, from a long line of great strategists, serving under an 80-year-old former military middle manager does not qualify you as a military expert. Any graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College or Naval Postgraduate School could poke holes in this wildly absurd concept paper but that isn’t the audience here. This book is for people looking to paint China as a country that will soon attack the United States with all its military might. Of course, please disregard world markets, a heavily armed citizenry, the luxury of geography, a vast network of democratic partner countries, and nuclear weapons.
Disappointing
Generally speaking, there are two groups of people.
Group one (including myself) are people who enjoy military news. I have no connection to any branch or the government, but I like to keep up on current events and the status of the US military. Group two is everyone else. This book is written for them and for them alone.
There is nothing groundbreaking or shocking in this book. The author cited no facts that I am not aware of via public sources. And I have no security clearance and no connection to government employment.
The bigger problem is this book’s structure and the author’s prose. This book is shocking short on facts, citations, etc. I agree with the hypothesis, but this author drones (pun intended) on and on...and on. Somewhere in between chapter three and six I realized that the same argument is made repeatedly to the point of being boring.
My point? Anyone in Group 1 already knows all of this. Anyone is Group 2 will stop reading/listening at Chapter 4. It is mundane. And despite the author’s claim, this book is not groundbreaking. It is an oversimplification of public-sphere data available for decades.