Technology Security and National Power

Winners and Losers

Stephen D. Bryen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351486699
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Technology Security and National Power, Stephen D. Bryen shows how the United States has squandered its technological leadership through unwise policies. Starting from biblical times, he shows how technology has either increased national power or led to military and political catastrophe. He goes on to show how the US has eroded its technological advantages, endangering its own security.The scope ofTechnology Security and National Power extends across 3,000 years of history, from an induced plague in Athens to chemical weapons at Ypres to an atomic bomb on Hiroshima to the nuclear balance of terror. It describes new weapons systems and stealth jets, cyber attacks on national infrastructure, the looting of America's Defense secrets, and much more. The core thesis is supported by unique insight and new documentation that reaches into today's conflicted world.More than a litany of recent failures and historical errors, this book is a wake-up call for political actors and government officials who seem unable to understand the threat. Technology Security and National Power proposes that the United States can again become a winner in today's globalized environment.

1

The Ancients and Technology

Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals,
and produces a weapon for its purpose

—Isaiah 54:16

We seem today so mesmerized by rapidly emerging technological innovations flooding us that we tend to forget that history has a lot to tell us about technology and its role in exercising political power and enabling military operations.

Certainly people who travel to Europe or the Middle East or South America or China often see some ancient achievements: pyramids in Egypt, water systems in Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey) built by the Greeks and Romans, the Pantheon in Rome, or the terracing systems of the Aztecs and Incas in North America, matched before them only by the Nabateans in Jordan¹ and Israel’s Negev.

There are tangible and visible outcroppings of ancient technology; plenty has been found and more is likely to reveal itself as archeological research continues to explore sites the world over—from China to Russia, from the Middle East to Britain, and much more.

Although our interest is mostly on technology that translates directly and obviously to political and military power, there are cases where technological improvements have security implications. For example, the toilets in the ruins of Pompey illustrate how the Romans made important progress in plumbing and sanitation. Had the Athenians done the same in 430 BC, the outcome of the Peloponnesian War might have been different.

The Athenians fighting the Spartan alliance followed a strategy of moving their outside-the-city population into Athens to keep them away from Spartan raiding parties. The overcrowding in Athens and the lack of sanitation took its toll and led to an outbreak of plague or a plague-like disease that killed more than half its population.

The Athenians acted out of prudence but created a catastrophe. Had they instead decided on an offensive strategy against the Spartans, the outcome could have been different. As it was, because of disease, Athens paid a very high price. Its leader, Pericles, died from plague rather than warfare. Not only was Athens depopulated, but the war with the Spartans dragged on for far too long, sapping their strength and wealth.

One of the most interesting accounts of how political control came about by the smart use of technology is recorded in the Bible. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles are not identical, and these texts have complex histories. The Bible was written and revised over many years and by many different hands to satisfy the needs of the community in any period, or to reinforce political, religious, and ideological themes (which also meant creatively changing the sense of the message of the ancient text, or altering the facts, or dropping out inconvenient bits). Remarkably, even with the reworking and redacting that took place over the centuries, certain highly interesting stories survived. One of them is the story of David, who defeated Saul, the first King of Israel.²

The David story is compelling for any number of reasons: he is probably one of the most complex characters in the Bible—a man who often sinned, was punished for his sins by God, but until the end of his life is favored as the “Beloved of God.”

The most important part of the David story for our purposes concerns David’s connection to the Philistines, a relationship that develops when he and some six hundred of his warriors were on the run from King Saul, who intended to trap and kill David and his men.

The biblical story, as we now have it, describes a struggle in which David, the hero, is unjustly treated by Saul. The prophet Samuel withdraws his support from Saul and chooses David as his successor.

But David is a wanted man and is on the run. He offers himself and his men to a local Philistine king (King Achish of Gath; Gath is one of five Philistine city-states, strategically located between the coastal plain of Israel and the Judean foothills, where the early Israelite settlements were concentrated). David and Achish form an alliance of convenience since both want to defeat Saul. What appears to seal the deal is David’s ability to provide strategic intelligence on Saul’s order of battle and his willingness to fight against Saul.³

The Philistines are believed to be of Cretan, or at least Aegean, origin. They occupied the coastal plain of Israel, stretching from below modern Gaza northward as far as Lebanon. The Philistines controlled all trade that passed through ancient Palestine and used their army to control the local tribes living in the area. Even so, Philistine rule had to balance off the much more powerful Egyptians to their south and the Assyrians in the north (the Assyrian empire would later be conquered and replaced by the Babylonians).

Israel’s first king was created to establish centralized leadership for the Israelite tribes. Up to Saul the tribes found it difficult to push the Philistines back or to deal effectively with military pressure from the Canaanites or others contending for local and regional control. Thus, over objections by the prophet Samuel, who feared centralized power, Saul was chosen (the time frame is 1200 BC).⁴

In any case, it is Samuel who chooses Saul. He participates in anointing him as king. We don’t learn more about the continuing relationship between Samuel and Saul as the focus of the narrative shifts to Saul’s kingship. Samuel is sidelined. What we do learn is that Saul, after some initial success, is hard pressed to preserve the independence of the tribes, which is ebbing away. Samuel distances himself from Saul, and we see the rise of the young David as an audacious military leader who can promise to defeat the enemy. Noting Samuel’s interest and his own desire to keep David under control, Saul marries David into his family and creates a strong personal relationship between David and Saul’s son. But it doesn’t work, and Saul next moves to assassinate David. David is warned and escapes.

From this point on, David and about six hundred men with him (plus their families) are far too few to challenge Saul’s leadership. They need an alliance that can help them, and they need technology in order to have the tools to defeat Saul. It is on this basis that David and his troops hire themselves out to Achish as mercenaries.

Why did the Israelites, under Saul’s leadership, find it impossible to win against the Philistines? The answer is reported clearly in the Bible: iron chariots. Indeed, this is the part of the biblical story that seems to have survived rewriting and rearranging.

As we read unmistakably in Judges 4:3, “And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD: for he had nine hundred chariots of iron; and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.” And we read in Judges 1:9 that “the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”⁵

In Judges the political situation is spelled out: the Hebrew tribes were able to contain the Philistines to some degree in the rocky, more mountainous areas because iron chariots could not function effectively in those places; but the critical valleys were held tightly by the Philistines.

This is not the first time, and it will not be the last, when chariots fitted with iron play a major role in biblical reports. For example, in Exodus we read that the pharaoh pursued the departing Israelites with six hundred iron chariots,⁶ which constitute a division of the royal bodyguard (Herod 2:168), with the rest of Egypt’s pursuit force assembled from the neighboring cities of northern Egypt, including Memphis, Heliopolis, Bubastis, Pithom, and Pelusium.

While the Bible is clear and unequivocal in describing iron chariots, exactly how iron was used in chariots is not preserved there. The evidence we have today does not prove iron chariots existed in the Davidic period. There is evidence that metal, perhaps iron, was used to line chariot axles to reduce wear; we have lynchpins made of brass that could also have been produced in iron; and we have reports that Canaanite chariots of the period had iron wheels—most likely iron used on the rims of wooden wheels. But the most important application would have been iron as a cladding on the sides or walls of the chariot. Chariots were intended to charge into the flanks of foot soldiers. In these fast-moving assaults, the occupants of the chariot were more exposed to spears, picks, and knives than arrows. Physical protection in the chariot therefore was of high importance. A case can be made that horses were protected as well. Of course protection like this added weight to the vehicle, making it unsuitable for going uphill and treacherous to operate on rocky soil.

Iron, unlike bronze, rusts away fairly quickly, which helps explain why there are far fewer surviving iron artifacts of the ancient world. The shift to iron came about because of tin shortages, although the evidence for this is disputed. Tin needed to be imported, and the primary sources seem to have been from Britain, from France, and some from the Mediterranean area. But as the larger powers such as Egypt increasingly took most of the tin available, smaller trading nations, including the Philistine principalities, needed to look elsewhere or devise alternatives. It was therefore a combination of availability and, most likely, spiraling price increases—and frequent supply disruptions because of local wars and even bad weather—that pressed them to use locally available materials. Iron was plentiful and could be imported from mines nearby using overland routes.

Thus there is the strongest possibility that as iron replaced bronze, chariots made use of iron materials for armor as well as for structural strengthening, especially the axle mechanisms and wheels. Light, reinforced chariots without the armor make sense in areas with rocky exposures and rough terrain. Therefore the reports of Canaanite iron chariots make sense if they were the light type.⁷ The use of iron was not lost on the Israelites. The Bible tells us that Solomon would build hundreds of iron chariots.

By the time of Cyrus the Great of Persia (530 BC), scythed chariots were used. “On both sides of the wheels, moreover, he attached to the axles steel scythes about two cubits long and beneath the axles other scythes pointing down toward the ground; this was so arranged with the intention of hurling the chariots into the midst of the enemy” (VI1:29).

Thus the development of iron manufacturing, which including smelting and forming iron, as well as repairing and sharpening iron implements, was an extremely important component of state power. States could either manufacture iron or import iron billets, but to do this they needed to control trade routes, and they required an infrastructure of artisans capable of utilizing the iron billets to manufacture war implements and tools important to the economy. Because farming implements were made from iron, controlling the production of these implements and the smiths who repaired and sharpened them gave the state significant economic control and military clout.

Iron and steel production origination dates differ depending on region, but the latest research is showing that iron and steel manufacturing occurred much earlier than supposed. Archeological evidence from Africa south of the Sahara reveals that iron production started around 1000 BC (conventional dating⁸). Experts believe that the origination of iron making in sub-Saharan Africa was a local development, and not a technological importation from Egypt as some supposed. There is powerful new evidence that iron and steel production were underway in what is now Turkey at Kaman-Kalehoyuk, about one hundred kilometers south of modern Ankara, between 2100 and 1950 BC. This investigation was carried out by a Japanese team of archeologists and metallurgists led by Hideo Akanuma from Iwate Prefectural Museum. The fact that the technology existed to manufacture and forge not only iron but steel this early means that iron would have been readily available for the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, which occurred roughly in 1592 BC. The Hyksos are, in the view of some experts, actually the infamous Amalekites of the Bible. The Amalekites, sometimes in alliance with the Philistines, sometimes opposed, are met by the Israeli tribes as they exit Egypt. Thereafter there are numerous and fierce battles with Israelite tribes reported in the Bible. The Amalekites could have gotten their iron implements from the Philistines, who are known to have traded with them, or from the Phoenicians or, even more likely, from the Canaanites. Archeologists credit the Canaanites with building chariots superior to those in Egypt, regarded as “iron chariots,” and fitting the bowmen on board the chariots armed with the first composite bows.

Map 1.1

Map 1.1 A political map of the areas of southern Judea, Gaza, and the upper Sinai at the time of the Hyksos-Amalekites.⁹

In ancient times a complex political situation existed in the area we would now call southern Israel, Gaza, and parts of the Sinai region. This is an area of substantial competition between ethnic and tribal groups; it is also an area with limited resources and goods for trading. It follows that the cost of raw materials such as copper and tin— especially tin which was rarer and had to be imported—meant that military weapons were getting more and more expensive and hard to obtain, especially for migratory parties like the Hebrews and the Hyksos-Amalekites. Iron, and iron processing, therefore was a less costly and practical substitute for bronze-tipped weapons, bronze armor, and bronze swords and spears. Furthermore, in the case of the Hyksos-Amalekites, much of what they had to trade was from plunder. The “cash cow” of the period was prisoners, especially women, who could be sold into slavery at a high profit. We can speculate that the iron business thrived on slaves for trade and as a captive workforce in the mines and smelts.

Who were technologically most creative, and therefore most important to the political and military ambitions of other powers? Not the Hebrews. The honor goes to the Canaanites.

Canaanites

The Canaanites were a wealthy group of small city-states located in parts of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel. They became, in the middle Bronze Age, technologically sophisticated, which can be determined by their advanced methods of making pottery and cooking utensils, their weaving techniques, and their ability to work with metals, primarily bronze made of copper and tin (Egyptian bronze of the parallel period is generally described as “arsenic bronze” because of the presence of arsenic in the metal). Above all, the Canaanites (sometimes misidentified as Phoenicians) ran an extensive trading network based on an excellent navy, including cargo vessels. Their know-how would survive the independence of the Canaanite city-states and was exploited by others, including the expansionist Persians some eight hundred years later.

Some think that the Canaanites got their chariot technology from the Hyksos, but it is more likely the other way around. Along with chariots and composite bows, the Canaanites were very innovative in technology for their time, originating the sickle sword, the socket axe, and massive ramparts to protect cities. A particularly important innovation was iron armor mail for high-ranking soldiers.

The Canaanites had a sophisticated military and well-developed battle tactics that served them well. The use of ch...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Ancients and Technology
• 2 Technology, Security, and Doctrine
• 3 Did a Microchip Win the Cold War?
• 4 The Soviet Military Buildup and Direktorat T
• 5 Proliferation
• 6 Cyber Warfare
• 7 Codes, Ciphers, Encryption, and Technology Security
• 8 Technology Security and Export Controls
• 9 Mobile Devices and Technology Security
• 10 Military Industry and Technology Security
• 11 A New Approach to Technology Security in a Globalized World
• 12 Winners and Losers
• Bibliography
• Index