In futurist circles and think tanks, sometimes the question comes up, “in the long run, which will be more effective, offense or defense?” The answer to this question has serious implications for which direction we should move in as a civilization — if defense is easier, then many autonomous, independent, largely unaccountable communities might be possible, but if offense is easier, then there may need to be a global police force to put down rogue states before they start invading their neighbors. A more acceptable version of a global police force would be an impartial singleton.

The first, and obvious point, is that this question is entirely technical, a matter of military and physical reality, unconnected to political or ideological beliefs. Political beliefs should flow from the technical assessment, not influence it. So, if it turns out that offense is easier, those that strongly support the existence of many autonomous unaccountable geopolitical units will be forced, whether they like it or not, to adjust their beliefs slightly to the other end of the spectrum, depending on how much better offense is than defense. Conversely, if defense is easier, police state globalists would be forced to acknowledge that their policing might not be as necessary as they want it to be.

In Atlantis, or some other imaginary ideal society, people look at the facts first, and formulate political beliefs later. All political beliefs are based on bedrocks of implicit facts, and if these facts turn out to be incorrect, the beliefs must be changed. One can imagine hypothetical sets of facts that arbitrarily force a reasonable person to adopt seemingly extreme beliefs.

Back to the attack vs. defense question. Looking at just the technology, it appears to me that attack is stronger than defense. Ballistic missiles have tremendous mass and momentum, and no proven technology would be capable of intercepting most of the thousands of missiles that could be launched by Russia or the United States. Submarines, which some have argued would deter nuclear war by offering second strikes, in fact exacerbate the risk by allowing first strikes due to their close proximity to a target country. The surprise benefit of submarine-launched ballistic missiles would lead them naturally to be launched first in a nuclear war, not last. This is already common knowledge among military planners.

What about the future? It seems as if attack technology will become better than it already is, if anything. Superior materials will allow ballistic missile submarines that can dive even deeper and become even more difficult to locate and destroy. (In the niche of submarines, it seems like defense might actually be better! Too bad it would be impractical to move all our cities and farms into stealthy underwater subs.) If effective interceptors can be developed to block conventional ballistic missile technologies, then missiles will simply evolve to overwhelm the interceptors, as they always have. Even today, it is cheaper to launch many dummy missiles than develop the technology to detect and dispatch all genuine missiles before they reach their targets.

The heat and pressure generated by nuclear bombs is tremendous, a consequence of the unfamiliar power locked in nuclear bonds relative to chemical bonds. In the very long run, avoiding the danger of nuclear bombs may become possible by using utility fog to throw up massive shields — but far more material is required to build an effective blast shield for an entire city than the material necessary to construct a nuclear bomb. Such materials might also be quickly penetrated by forerunner missiles, only to be followed by a primary salvo seconds later. In an arms race between weapons and shields, weapons are frequently, if not always, likely to win.

Considering weapons aside from just nuclear bombs, within a couple decades it will be possible to construct tiny, possibly even microscopic machines that can deliver fatal doses of toxin to human targets or sabotage sensitive electronic equipment with the most innocuous of payloads. Such machines could be distributed across enemy territory days or even weeks in advance, spreading as slowly and at as low a density as necessary to avoid tripping detection equipment. With such technology, even a small ruthless country with a large military, such as North Korea, might be able to take out a so-called juggernaut such as the United States. Unless we have abundant nanomachines flowing through our veins and crawling over our skin, analyzing every particle for the presence of a few nanograms of lethal toxin, the microbot approach to total war will prove highly effective.

To challenge those who disagree with me, I ask how a defense measure that costs equal to or less than nuclear missiles might be developed, or how a defense program against lethal microbots might be established that allows the citizenry of a country to go about their daily business. Frequently, it seems that an effective defensive technology is 20-30 years more advanced than an effective offensive technology. Since there are many dozens of nations around the world within 20-30 years of parity with each other in terms of technology, the future of war seems to place a large incentive on making first strikes. Avoiding rapidly escalating lethal wars seems to be either dependent on a major technology differential (like Israel vs. Hamas), or the inherent universal benevolence of political leaders. Unfortunately, voters tend select leaders that think of their own country first, and the world community afterward.