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The Military

'Modern War Cannot Be Won Without Software,' Palantir Executive Says (calcalistech.com) 120

Posted by msmash from the new-world-order dept.
Software has become essential for winning modern wars, a senior Palantir executive told a defense conference in Israel this week. "Modern war cannot be won without software," said Noam Perski, executive vice president at the data analytics company.

"Seeing software as a defense system, as a weapon system, and the most malleable weapon system we have, is really important as we build the next generation's capabilities." Speaking at Tel Aviv University's first DefenseTech Summit, Perski said human factors still determine military success.

'Modern War Cannot Be Won Without Software,' Palantir Executive Says More | Reply

'Modern War Cannot Be Won Without Software,' Palantir Executive Says

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  • list of software needed (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:10AM (#65005543)

    falken's maze
    black jack
    gin rummy
    hearts
    bridge
    checkers
    chess
    poker
    fighter combat
    guerrilla engagement
    desert warfare
    air-to-ground actions
    theaterwide tactical warfare
    theaterwide biotoxic and chemical warfare
    global thermonuclear war

  • Modern war cannot be won... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:14AM (#65005547)

    ...and it's not meant to. Modern war is an economic outlet meant to keep post-capitalistic economies going by providing infinite growth through waste of resources.

    • Well they can when it goes past the point where there's more money to be made in reconstruction than destruction.

    • ...and it's not meant to. Modern war is an economic outlet meant to keep post-capitalistic economies going by providing infinite growth through waste of resources.

      You're confusing the cold war with actual war. Russia attacking Ukraine isn't an economic outlet. Israel trying to get Gaza to cease existing isn't an economic outlet.

      But I get it, it's 2024, my grandparents are dead, I'm guessing yours too and we now live in a world where a lot of people have no fucking idea what a "war" actually is.

      • Re:Modern war cannot be won... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @12:34PM (#65005735) Journal
        Israel trying to get Gaza to cease existing isn't an economic outlet.

        Oddly enough, it is. Israel just deliberately killed 19 civilians in Gaza [bbc.com] when they bombed the home the people were sheltering in. This is in addition to the thousands of civilians it has deliberately killed so far. And the reason is economic. Israelis are talking about having villas in occupied Gaza [inews.co.uk] once the civilians have been killed off [bbc.com], though it's not as if Jews aren't already stealing Palestinian homes [youtube.com].

        What Israel wants is the land from river to sea and they don't care how many people they have to kill to get it because they know two things: they've bought the U.S. congress who will do absolutely nothing to stop the genocide, and because their god told them to do so.

        Just remember, when Jews are targeted and their property taken, it's a travesty. When Jews taget others and take their property, no one sees a thing.

        • Re:Modern war cannot be won... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @01:15PM (#65005849)

          That's a stupid leap to make. Israel's proposed villas in Gaza have zero to do with economics and everything to do with grabbing land and having the territory cease existing. Gaza isn't some magical resource loaded nation of natural resources. There's zero economic benefit to building villas in Gaza vs building them in the spaces outside Gaza.

          It's not economic. Yeah they want land, but only because someone else is on it. They have a shitton of unused land of equal economic value themselves. Gaza as a region was wholly dependent on Israel - your economic theory is just absurd.

          • Right, owning land has nothing to do with economics.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            There is oil off the coast of Gaza. The villas are just military outputs in disguise - if any former resident tries to return, the ex-IDF settlers living their will murder them and claim self defence. They are there as much to secure the oil and ports as much as anything else.

        • Even to the extent that is true, seizing more lebensraum is not the same thing as intentionally wasting blood and treasure just to maximize economic output, as was claimed.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Unfortunately their version of "from the river to the sea" means from the Euphrates River to the Red Sea. For some odd reason the neighbors seem to disagree.

        • What Israel wants is the land from river to sea

          I remember hearing that chant a lot at protests I went to.

      • "Russia attacking Ukraine isn't an economic outlet. Israel trying to get Gaza to cease existing isn't an economic outlet."

        Wrong twice

        • Thankyou for your thoughtful and detailed response. Someone piss in your cornflakes this morning? At least normally when you say stupid things you're more verbose.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        I think you underestimate just how much money flows through private hands for war in those countries. Both Russia and Israel have famously corrupt military industrial complex (way, way more than even america) with few if any boundaries between state and private enterprise.
    • I came here to say something like this, but... it is true that wars don't seem to have clear winners or losers lately. Whether or not it's for the economic jazz, I can't really say, but I'm sure some people who will start wars are thinking of that as an added benefit for their patrons/constituents.

    • And to facilitate the transfer of public money into private pockets with "consent".

  • super old idea (Score:5, Informative)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:17AM (#65005559)
    Combined arms warfare, or whatever the current fashionable noun is used for the concept. Modern warfare is won by the combined use of air, land, sea, people, machines, and nowadays you gotta add-in software, space and even internet stuff as well. If an adversary has a bad gap in any of these areas, it's something that can be exploited by a more organized adversary.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I'm not really clear on what "software, space and even internet stuff" Hamas is using in Gaza, but for over a year they've been kicking the ass of one of the most over-militarized countries on the planet (which incidentally really do have access to all that and more).

      • I'm not really clear on what "software, space and even internet stuff" Hamas is using in Gaza, but for over a year they've been kicking the ass of one of the most over-militarized countries on the planet (which incidentally really do have access to all that and more).

        Maybe you misunderstand what modern warfare means. Look at it like modern sports physiology made "just hit the track" obsolete, but it did not make hitting the track obsolete. See what Ukraine has been able to pull off holding its own against Russia, but they still need to modernize.

        • The Ukrainian army is one of the most advanced around, especially for its size. It doesn't matter that they didn't invent their tech, they have it, and they use it, and they know how to deprive their enemy of its use. They have a lot of help, but again, that isn't part of the argument.
      • Are you joking? You think the Gazans are kicking the Israelis ass? What planet do you live on? This is “Earth”.

        Survival is not the same as victory.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Hamas never had more than 30,000 members, of which less than a third were trained fighters (most of the rest were municipal employees, you needed to join to qualify for the job). Israel in October 2023 had 169,500 active military personnel in the army, navy, and paramilitary, and another 465,000 reservists. Israel's military budget is 15th largest in the world, $27.5 billion, larger than Canada and more than all the Scandinavia countries combined. Hamas with drips and drabs of funding trickling in over y

    • Combined arms warfare, or whatever the current fashionable noun is used for the concept. Modern warfare is won by the combined use of air, land, sea, people, machines, and nowadays you gotta add-in software, space and even internet stuff as well. If an adversary has a bad gap in any of these areas, it's something that can be exploited by a more organized adversary.

      Maybe you had a point in there somewhere and I've missed it, but you can draw a line from using skirmishers, spearmen and calvalry to vertical envelopment with helicopters if you want to make the point that combined arms is an old idea, but what exactly does that have to do with the changes aerial envelopment brought to modern warfare?

      Take software and small unit situational awareness, just for example. I can quote some Sun Tzu and call it an old idea, but we're talking about new capabilities that will evol

      • Whoosh. The statement that “modern tech is important to warfare” is not exactly profound, especially coming from the mouth of a defense firm executive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      From what I can tell the software seems to mostly be used to commit war crimes more efficiently.

  • He stopped short... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:18AM (#65005563) Homepage

    of saying that modern war cannot be won without buying software his company sells.

    • of saying that modern war cannot be won without buying software his company sells.

      And how's it going to work if there are no more wars, that's what they say, no more wars. Who's going to pay for it? He should pay us to use his software! - Trump, probably

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cpurdy ( 4838085 )
      Palantir is mostly just a scam, selling open source libraries that they downloaded from the interwebs to governments that are too stupid to know better.

  • Thiel lackies can kick rocks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:33AM (#65005593)

    I am tired of these corporatists that want to push themselves into the mainstream as important while only wanting to ensure their corporate immortality which only fuel's Peter's quest for literal immortality.

    I hope this incoming administration implodes and somehow many of these power hungry individuals somehow manage to become irrelevant. I think the United States and the world would be better off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      If it does the US is likely to follow the Sadministration down the tubes. The neo-con group-think in DC has so overextended itself that I can't help but think the whole house of cards could come down if they do something stupid enough.

  • World war 2 could not have been won without software. This guy is selling insight that is nearly 100 years old.

    • The 'could not' is a problem. Sure without the message decryption the war could be won but would cost more time, resources and lives. Ditto with the Manhattan project.
  • Hear me out. Ukraine and Russia are both depending on more advanced algorithms to counter drone jamming, and the decisions are too complex for decision trees. "return to base" won't work without GPS or radio beacon. To survive under heavy jamming a drone has to, at a minimum, use somewhat better than the terrain-following that Tomahawks have had for 50 years. (even if the base hasn't moved the terrain features to follow can't be programmed in advance) But target identification and more advanced war-fighting
    • I think most of the people who are rabidly against (or dismissive of) AI are mainly focused on LLMs.

  • Time to refactor from stem to stern? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @11:43AM (#65005623)

    I would probably assert this is true. Pretty much almost anything we have past small arms is dependent on software.

    However, this makes it more important to consider a "global refactor". Maybe going back to security practices of making the OS secure in depth, as opposed to bolting on things to make it more secure? For example, EDR/MDR/XDR core should be an integral part of the OS (with the updates running in userland), not something running as a process, just like permissions are. Or maybe even consider going to a microkernel architecture which would make Spectre/Meltdown style attacks a lot harder to do, especially if other mitigations are used. Changing chip architectures may be good as well, perhaps moving from something with a lot of cruft on it like x86 to a RISC architecture, or maybe a simplified x86 architecture like x86s. Or even going as crazy as going to a Harvard architecture, separating data from code. For hardware, going with a passive backplane might be good. There are a lot of things left sitting on the side of the road that were tossed because it was cheaper to cut corners, and might be wise to revisit. Or, perhaps take concepts from the mainframe.

    It might even be wise to consider languages where one can figure out all known states a program might wind up in, like Ada or SPARK. Of course, this is anathema to modern "it builds, ship it!" code development, but it might be what we need to fall back to, if we are wanting to do things "right" for the long term, so we can create code that doesn't need constant updates and fixes.

    Software is pretty much everything, but maybe it might be time to start figuring out the house of cards, before it falls over? Something on a lower layer that is all but forgotten about like SSL or Log4J could bring a lot of places to their knees, security-wise.

  • cannot be won without drones, the side with the most will win. That includes of course the all-time favorite human drones but also flying drones and also humanoid autonomous and remote controllable drones.

    • The big question there is whether it's better to have a smaller number of high end drones (hey, did you know the B21 can fly unmanned missions?) or loads of cheap short-range ones. A lot of people are looking at Ukraine and insisting the quantity swamps quality. I'm not so sure. Explain to me how to destroy (or even locate!) an aircraft carrier group that can strike at you from thousands of km out at sea, using a drone having a range of 10 km. Life would get pretty hard if the sky above you is dominated
      • These small drones are like IEDs. They are helpful, but don't win wars.

        They are cheap so you can make a lot of them, but the technology to counter them is also cheap (basically a souped-up bottle rocket).
  • ... but has anyone been suggesting that wars be waged *without* software?

    If they're handing out smart points these days for stating the obvious, I'd like to go on record as saying that the participants in wars should wear pants. Hmm, or maybe full-length ballgowns covered in sequins. Well, it's complicated.

  • There is nothing modern about war.

  • "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

  • What was the software used by the rebels in Syria?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      What was the software used by the rebels in Syria?

      How do you imagine the intelligence they needed was gathered and transmitted?

  • From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    The conflict officially ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which overthrew the Islamic Republic, and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States, surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately six months.

    So either the Taliban has better software than the US and its allies or that was 2021 and the world has modernized since then.

    • ... the world has modernized ...

      You mean, the military has modernized: That would be agreeing with the military idea that superior guns win the war. Technically true but the US had superior weaponry in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan: Superior guns did not cause the USA to win those conflicts. Those wars were more about occupation than invasion and elimination. (What Israel is doing now.) Better guns did not make occupying enemy territory, better.

  • I think you can get it on Steam (Score:4, Funny)

    by fortfive ( 1582005 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2024 @03:24PM (#65006177)

    for about $20.

  • Stating war requires software is not insightful.

  • If you drop the Windows NT Server Developer Kit on an enemy from 60,000 feet, no doctor can help him.

  • "Defence"

    "Attack" without the smear of aggression - cf GWB 2003 "Preemptive Response"

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