Sixth Wave of Innovation (2020-2045)
By 2020 we would
have entered the Sixth Wave of Innovation (6WoI).
Some experts claim the sixth wave has already started around 2015. As
per Schumpeter’s Cycles/waves of innovation that define the economic system of
the world, currently we are running the 5th wave of innovation based
on software, digital networks and new media (1990-2020)[1].
This wave is going to give way to the sixth wave of
innovation which will be based[2]
on (a) Things becoming Nano, Networked, Autonomous and Hypersonic, through (2)
Computational approaches based on Algorithmic intelligence and Quantum
Computing, thereby providing (3) ability to synthesize reality, biology and
energy.
Creative
Destruction
As
pointed out by Schumpeter[3] the new wave of technological innovation also
brings along the creative destruction. He writes, “Process of industrial
mutation, incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within,
incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”.
The
sixth wave of innovation, however, also is coupled this time with shaking up
of the world order. One can say, so were the previous waves – start of 5th
wave (1990-2020) was also the demise of Soviet Union and end of Cold War albeit
with a new war on Iraq – the 1991 Gulf War. Similarly, the 4th wave
of innovation (1950-1990) driven by Petrochemicals, Electronics and Aviation
started after the colossal World War II.
Globalization and Anti-Globalization –
What has changed in the 5th Wave of Innovation (1990-2020)
Has the world changed more in last 30
years than it changed in previous 30 years? Is the new world after the end of
cold war changing much more rapidly compared to the world that was on tight
leash by the opposing superpowers? From
1989 to 2019 we definitely have come a long way ahead. One may argue that will
always be the case in any 30 year period. Would one say that from 1959 – 1989
world changed much less than it changed from 1989-2019? Or is this question insignificant?
Definitely last thirty years have
given us a tremendously fast-paced connected world, some may argue connected
dangerously and some others may say pacing dangerously – as a small event in
one small part may have an unprecedented effect on the whole world. The world
built on information superstructure that has been in the making for many
decades after Second World War, has definitely shaped the present idiosyncratic
world that is too complex and aberrant with serious global ramifications of
very small events felt instantly around.
Amy Chuha
in her book “World on Fire” [4]describes
"globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and
democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal
violence throughout the developing world." This is really the other side -
the connected beings in the globalizing world become “haves” and stronger “haves”,
leaving the unconnected ones as “have-nots”. This is a potentially dangerous
disparity that can kill the very roots of globalization. Borders and cultures
still matter greatly as they provide an identity to individuals, and individual
communities, which they want to protect at huge costs. There in lies the
nemesis of standardization through technology enabled globalization. Hence a
backlash to globalization has started in this decade, surprisingly driven by the
very nations that were championing globalization in 1990s.
The first market crash after the word
Globalization became a commodity was a clear indication of the complex world
that we live in now. Complicated new financial tools outpaced the comprehension
of regulators, bankers or customers. In fact, comprehension has gone for a toss
– despite being free we are swamped with unprecedented choices – and the
explosion of choice is not what human mind can absorb easily. This is the
danger of complexity. When Globalization is the focus - complexity increases
without warning and it engulfs the world in dimensions not comprehensible. How to design globalization without
discounting complexity is what Innovation should be focusing on - therein lies
the play - globalization, complexity and
innovation as three-pronged world dimensions need to be taken care of,
simultaneously.
When western countries (read US) forced
Indian and other Asian economies to open their markets in late 1980s and early
1990s, the west believed that it will get large markets for its products as
well as cheap labor to work leaving enough resources for its leisure and
pleasure. The western countries forced economies to open through multiple
thrusts and forces that the so called poor protected economies had no means to
push back. The poor relented. In 1990s opening of Indian economy was criticized
and generated a feeling of fear of new products coming to India thus ending the
so-called monopoly of existing players in the protected economy.
Well, two decades later, the story has
been turned on its head. It is the hunter who is feeling hunted now. The Asian
industries due to the strong innovation capability in a constrained environment
that they are used to, have created a much bigger impact due to spreading
globalization - for the simple reason that
people there are more used to ingenuity in adapting to change. And the
change is what has exploded due to globalization. In the Connected Age, the
early adapters will only thrive. The era of lazy, leisure seeking,
materialistic, automation dependent humans - in any society - either in US,
Europe or Asia is ending. We have entered the age of continuous creative work -
that will lead to the future - under constraints of living with limited natural
resources. Some years back an article in New Yorker
noticed, “When we persuaded developing countries to open their doors to us, we
also opened our doors to them. Now they’re walking through[5]." Well,
when doors are opened, traffic tends to flow both ways.
Rise of China, Strategic Superpower
Competition in Cyberspace and Digital Economy
The
Global Order started changing at the end of 1980s and with the demise of Soviet
Union and an unprecedented display of modern military prowess through
information technologies and beaming of war operations in our drawing rooms in
1991 Gulf-war, a Uni-polar world was announced. A decade later, 9/11 demonstrated that the
type of technologies and integration of various aspects of military mission
that have been unleashed can be effectively used by relatively small groups who
may have resource crunch but are intensely motivated or brain-washed have-nots
of the world and can inflict damage
through a careful combination of networks, knowledge, motivation and scheming. The
US in its continuous efforts and focus on Russia in 1990s and even early
2000s was so completely engaged with the
war on terror that it somehow missed the rise of a new power – the people’s
republic of China. In fact, till last decade the Sino-US economies were too interlinked to consider thoughts of a
joint Sino-US world economic order.
However, this time the shakeup is
happening in the forms that are not well-known (trade war between not
so sincere and genuine friends – US and China - since 1998[6]
as
stated by eminent Chinese Scholar - Yan Xuetong. He further states and predicts that the world
is headed towards a Bipolar Order that will be different from cold war of the
past in many aspects – especially as it is not based on ideology but on
technology and race for national power. However, the most important aspect this
“strategic competition” offers is in the form and shape it is taking in an unchartered
territory of cyberspace and digital economy. We are moving towards an
uncertain, unstable and chaotic state of
world affairs with everyone having mistrust of the superpowers as well
as the multilateral treaties and structures.
It’s time to Define - Cyberspace
What do we mean by Cyberspace? What about Cyber Warfare? Cyber Security?
There doesn't seem to be a definition that is agreed upon.
“Cyberspace” –
Definitions Deluge – What it is? Pentagon – which
can be credited with the creation of ARPANET in 1970s – a precursor to perhaps
one of the greatest distractions to humanity in the last century - the
Internet – has provided at least 12 definitions of “Cyberspace” over the
years. The latest being the year 2008 definition, “The global domain within
the information environment consisting of the interdependent networks of
information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecom networks,
computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers”.
Singer and Friedman in their book, “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar – what everyone needs to know”[7], describe
cyberspace as
“Cyberspace is the realm of computer networks (and the
users behind them) in which information is stored, shared, and communicated
online”.
The book further lists
down the key feature of cyberspace as - an information environment made up of
digitized data that is created, stored, and most importantly shared. It is not
the data alone, but it includes the networks of computers, infrastructure,
Internet, Intranets, and other communication systems that allow information,
organized as digital data, to flow. Since the authors include people/users of
the information structures as well, the definition includes cognitive realm, besides the physical
and digital spaces.
Cyberspace may be global
but it has its divisions and notions of sovereignty, nationality and property.
Cyberspace is “living” – constantly changing, evolving. Unlike geography the cyberspace
geography is much more mutable. Evolving from an initial “expert” only strata,
it has become the nervous system controlling the economy and has already become
the dominant platform for life in 21st Century. Internet is where we live –
central platform for business, culture and personal relationship. However,
it is a place where everyone doesn’t play nice. Increasingly it has become a
place of risk and danger.
Cyberspace-X Given the above
centrality of “cyberspace” in our life, we see the emergence of multi-hued
specific context “cyberspaces”. These “specific context cyberspaces” would
prefer to be disjoint – or “air-gapped” – from the global cyberspace – for
different reasons (such as privacy, security, niche nature of transactions
and/or specific functionality, features or fraternity), yet they will use and
allow the core technologies for digital
data, infrastructure, protocols, software, rules, computers and communication
systems that are used to build “the global cyberspace”. We will call these
special context Cyberspaces as Cyberspace-X.
The general-purpose
Cyberspace-X may include but is not limited to - Strategic Cyber Space
(e.g., MNCs, Large enterprises, National Governments),
Politico-military/Military Cyber Space, Governance Cyber Space, Open market
places/ e-Commerce/auction exchanges, Social networks, Vehicular ( train or
ship), etc.
Definition of Cyberspace-X
The specific
context cyber spaces (calling it Cyberspace-X) is information, communication,
computing and decision environment where digital data is created, stored,
exchanged, flows, and updated for assisting, enabling, and making various
actors (automatons and humans) enact their roles, perform their functions, and
achieve their objectives, over different computer networks. The networks and
cyberspace are potentially vulnerable to unauthorized actors who may have adverse
objectives to those of the actors belonging and authorized to the cyberspace.
These objectives may include disrupting, degrading, damaging,
destroying, and even demolishing the components, capabilities, and
infrastructure of Cyberspace-X.
Cyberspace strategic competition is
new form of warfare in the Multi-dimensional warfare
As I mentioned in my previous
article[8],
we have identified 15 dimensions of warfare including the Cyberspace and
Economic Warfare. Further, we are witnessing a change in the character of
warfare in these dimensions along with strategic switching from one dimension
to another as an offset strategy. Cyberspace Strategic Competition in a digital
economy that is transitioning to the sixth wave of innovation through creative
destruction of established economic systems is a sure shot recipe for
increasing entropy of the repolarizing world.
Goals and Objectives of 15-D warfare
in the Sixth wave of innovation
The truism captured in the dictum “war is politics
by other means” need to be relooked in the “new” warfare – with a caveat
warfare indeed is either new or different from what we have seen or known
before. War has always been one of the means to achieve political goals. Nature
of war as a violent means to inflict damage or cost on the adversary for diplomatic,
political, economic reasons or ownership of resources has remained same for too
long. The question to be explored, analyzed and perhaps understood through
potentially a new framework of warfare is how much and in what form the
political goals that have historically driven wars between nation states have
changed, mutated or will evolve in the new dimensions that have emerged or may
emerge in future.
Indian defence capability for the wars
in the Sixth wave of Innovation (2020-2045)
Creating the defence forces, their
doctrine and their equipment for this sixth wave of innovation are questions
that we need to answer. These force structures, systems and doctrines need to
respond to threats that will also be evolving in the sixth wave of
innovation.
Starting point of course is to clearly
understand the Goals and Objectives of India in emerging world. The emerging
world is displaying upheavals or instability in the emerging strategic
landscape of potential bipolarity which will be stable, with technology driven
creative-destruction of the established world economic system where means of
production and skills needed to operate are substantially being transferred to
non-human systems. Further, the opaqueness of the substrate on which our human
oriented conflict-dynamics played historically has changed and is changing
rapidly into interconnected and interdependent systems of unparalleled
complexity. We are truly perplexed to operate in this substrate of man-made
dimensions yet incomprehensible by human mind.
While we do need to
change military structures, the political requirements for going to war need to
be seen - are these changing? Thus, what will be the political aim - defend the
territory or destroy the enemy? Is India going to fight an adversary who has
military or will it be non-state actors or surrogate organizations designed for
hybrid or asymmetric wars with asymmetric instruments of war[9]? Maneuver aims the enemy's mind as against the
physical destruction of men and material in attrition war. In the 15-D warfare
what will be maneuvered – will it be multi-dimensional pain-inflicting
capability or will it be encirclement, dimension by dimension? What will defeat
the enemy? Physical casualties or total disruption of the systems of
administration and governance? What will be defeat or victory? Are we moving
towards a continuous orientation of resources and switching of conflicts in
these dimensions? These aspects will dictate the force structures and weapon
systems required. The war ends when one government accepts defeat/ceasefire.
Are these changing? Perhaps we are moving to an era where wars will co-exist
with peace, only the eclectic mix will have characteristics that will vary
dimension to dimension? We are not going to kill each other in millions as we
did in 20th century wars, but will we not be continuously,
comprehensively and certainly at the throats of each other – an era of
multi-level mis-trust between global and regional powers or at even smaller
national levels?
These questions do
not have straightforward answers.
We propose following three initiatives
for Indian defence and security establishments to develop and create for the
Warfare and wars in the sixth wave of innovation
Develop a New Theory of War, Warfare and
Combat for the Sixth Wave of Innovation (2020-2045) – Systems Approach to
discover, define, describe, develop, design & deploy, and operate the new
forces and also define how will India fight these wars and political reasons or
goals that will need us to go to war in a dimension against a particular
adversary
Theory of war, warfare and combat, as
defined in the previous centuries are based on Clausewitz and two specific
approaches to combat – attrition and maneuver in the general sense. Combined
with Boyd’s OODA loop and dismantlement of Clauswitzian center of gravity of
the opponent, the theory still remains deeply ingrained in the defence
structuring and development of nations
at large.
The first two decades of this century,
however, have shown the inadequacy of the theory to explain the type of wars
and the changing character of war that has emerged. Nations and powers are
playing war in all 15 dimensions that we have identified. The Chinese
Unrestricted war proposed in 1999 and Russian Hybrid war since 2006 have also
become multi-domain war/operations including the so-called information domain.
The
7th Revolution in Military Affairs[10]
– called the Autonomous/Robotic war will become more and more pronounced as we
move to the third decade of 21st century. India should develop
the new theory of political goals, objectives and drivers as also of war,
warfare and combat as the Clausewitz “nature” of war that has remained
invariant to date is already undergoing a noticeable change.
New methods for Defence and security
Systems in Sixth Wave of Innovation
The Globalizing innovation Complexity
of the 21st century has given us and is demanding systems that are ultra-large-scale
systems[11].
Further complexity of such system of systems on Internet scale demands
mechanisms that are increasingly becoming harder to to comprehend by the users, viz., what is cyberspace really? This dumbing down
of human operators and users in the explosion of technological complexity
requires us to find new approaches to understand, build and operate such systems. Further, the chances of such
systems failing humanity and the national infrastructures built on top of them are increasing in an
opaque manner. We need new approaches for such systems – what methods we use to
design a building cannot be used to design a city. Scale requires new
approaches for defending and securing such systems in an increasingly complex
globalizing world.
Scale, Computation, Algorithmic and
Network (SCAN) Thinking for Warfare in the Sixth Wave of Innovation
We have been using analytical and
logical thinking for solving problems and developed comprehensive toolsets,
procedures and methodologies for applying such thinking to fulfil our needs,
capture opportunities and solve problems. We
have also experienced value
thinking, inventive thinking and systems thinking – although not to the extent
of analysis and logic. The new wave, however, is demanding us to develop and
apply new forms of thinking in 4 new dimensions – Scale
thinking[12],
Computational
thinking[13],
Algorithmic thinking (Pentagon
already has an algorithmic warfare cell[14])
and Network
thinking[15]
(The SCAN thinking dimensions). It is essential that we develop our solutions,
systems, force structures, doctrines and combat capabilities for the 15-dimensional
warfare in the sixth wave of innovation using SCAN thinking besides utilizing
the analytical, logical, value, inventive and systems thinking approaches that
have helped us to respond effectively in the previous waves .
Key Message – Creating
an Indian capability for wars and warfare for sixth wave of innovation
We
are in a repolarizing world reflected in strategic superpower competition between
the US and China in an unfathomable cyberspace and digital-economy territory
that will give rise to a new type of bipolar world. Further, world economy is
going through a new creative destruction driven by things becoming nano,
hypersonic, networked and autonomous. These are being developed using new forms
of algorithmic intelligence and quantum computing. Humankind has got an
unprecedented ability with these technologies
to synthesize biology, energy and reality. This will give rise to a new wave of
innovation which we call the sixth wave of innovation (2020-2045). Since the
wars in the sixth wave will be 15-dimensional, national interests, our
geo-political, geo-economic and strategic objectives need to be clearly
articulated. However, the clarity on the linkages between political objectives in
the new world and means to achieve them through war are becoming nebulous. The
uncertainty and lack of clarity on national objectives in the 15-dimension
warfare exacerbated by the increasing entropy of the world order, technology
driven creative destruction of economic systems and seemingly increasing
mutations of warfare require a comprehensive rethink on how to defend and
secure the nation. Our forces and our
defence capabilities need to be enhanced using the new development tools,
concepts and thinking for the sixth wave of innovation. We propose that a new
theory of political objectives with comprehensive details of national interests
should be developed along with the new theory, new methods and new thinking to recreate
defence capabilities for wars and warfare in the upcoming sixth wave of
innovation. A tall order indeed, alas, it is inevitable now!
[1] https://www.economist.com/special-report/2014/08/11/catch-the-wave
[2] http://www.crafitti.com/sixth-woi.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy
[4] https://www.amazon.com/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instability/dp/0385721862
[5] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/01/28/the-tata-invasion
[6] http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1157022.shtml#.XSN1quFpitU.linkedin
[7] https://www.amazon.com/Cybersecurity-Cyberwar-Everyone-Needs-Know%C2%AE/dp/0199918112/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465408825&sr=1-1&keywords=cybersecurity+and+cyberwar+what+everyone+needs+to+know
[8] http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/war-as-a-multi-dimensional-whole-a-framework-for-india-in-a-repolarizing-world/
[9] http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/winning-the-asymmetric-wars-matrix-of-instruments-of-war/
[10] https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/issues/Winter_2017-18/5_Hoffman.pdf
[11] https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/asset-view.cfm?assetid=30519
[12] https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/geoffrey-wests-long-anticipated-book-scale-emerges
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_thinking
[14] https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/05/pentagons-new-algorithmic-warfare-cell-gets-its-first-mission-hunt-isis/137833/
[15] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-77028-2_3
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