TECHNOLOGYBookshelf: Smartphones Shape War in Hyperconnected World
The smartphone is helping to shape the conduct and representation of contemporary war. A new book argues that as an operative device, the smartphone is now “being used as a central weapon of war.”
The smartphone is helping to shape the conduct and representation of contemporary war, argues Matthew Ford in his new book, War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity and the Crises at our Fingertips.
This shaping is a complex process, underpinned by layers of civilian and military cyber and digital infrastructure that populate our entire environment. Smartphones, with their ever-developing communication, sensor and app functions, are embedded within this infrastructure. They have also been co-opted for security, surveillance and targeting purposes by state and non-state actors, becoming, according to Ford, an ‘integral part of the kill chain’.
Ford argues that, as an operative device, the smartphone is now ‘being used as a central weapon of war’. He points to the use of smartphones to record, collect and globally broadcast images and details of war. Such representations, constantly disseminated at signal speed, take war beyond geographic battlefields into virtual worlds, where they can be tactically used for activities such as information warfare.
The book amplifies the warning of Australia’s director-general of security, Mike Burgess, that ‘a hyper-connected world will allow political tensions or conflicts overseas to resonate quickly in Australia, spread by social media and online echo chambers, inflamed by mis- or disinformation’. Ford’s spotlight on how rapid delivery and social media saturation of representations of war influence global political and public perceptions of war is indeed timely, and urgent.
War in the Smartphone Age benefits from Ford’s technical and technological enquiry, his military history and his media studies research. This includes close analyses of contemporary lethal strategies and technologies used in wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. He acknowledges the physical dangers of war on the ground, also emphasizing that latent lethality is harbored by globally ‘meshed’ military and civilian technologies. This raises ethical and legal concerns, including civilian status and civilian safeguards, and a tension between corporate or government control of and responsibility for software, platforms and networks. Additionally, investigation of open-source intelligence activities reveals further complexities of war in a hyperconnected world.
Ford’s research intersects with issues that are pertinent for Australian defense, military and security players. One of these issues relates to the concept of acceleration. The 2023 Defense Strategic Review (DSR) addressed concerns that the Australian Defense Force was ‘not fully fit for purpose’ with aspirations for an ‘accelerated preparedness’ policy. Although preparedness is mentioned in the 2024 National Defense Strategy and Integrated Investment Program, the urgency of the DSR had dissipated by 2024. The chapter, ‘Accelerated War’, provides clues that could explain why.
The DSR noted that Australia required accelerated preparedness because warning time or geography can no longer be relied upon. However, this was not matched with big-picture re-conceptions of the kind (or kinds) of war that must be prepared for. Ford’s description of accelerated war—‘where the time between identifying and hitting a target is defined by the speed of data’—stimulates big picture and alternative ideas. By positioning data, signal speed and reduced time as related characters, he identifies key drivers of contemporary and future war. He asks two questions that help us to think about the implications of these factors on preparedness: ‘is it possible to accelerate war to the speed of data and what does this tell us about the new face of battle?’
An observation that ‘the systems enabling accelerated warfare are globally distributed and owned by private entities that may or may not choose to cooperate with the state’ has implications for whole-of-government and whole-of nation defense strategies. These implications include how civilian technologies may adversely affect or positively contribute to security capabilities, defense capabilities and sovereign resilience.
A chapter on ‘Participative Warfare’ addresses the issue of civilian involvement in war and preparedness. Using multiple examples of civilian participation in the war in Ukraine, particularly using smartphones, the author demonstrates that nations need to pay attention to what ‘whole-of’ strategies practically mean, especially for civilians.
In a rapidly changing world, the book informs while provoking more questions. Written for a broad public, military and academic audience, War in the Smartphone Age is a timely catalyst for brave and creative thinking about war, peace and the future.
Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox is an honorary research fellow in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
