Future Conflict & Emerging Tech: Brose’s "The Kill Chain" Reviewed

Emerging Technology

I heard about Christian Brose’s book The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare when the book came out four years ago. Given my work in the intelligence community at the time and my past career experiences, I was well familiar with many of the themes that he talks about, but I had not read the book until this year. My mistake. What I missed is the opportunity to see a well-informed insider’s take, in a single volume, on a complex set of interconnected defense, competition with China, and technology issues amidst the evolving character of future conflict.

Brose sounds an alarm that the United States’ military dominance - born out of World War II and honed to victory in the Cold War - is eroding rapidly and is not moving fast enough to adapt to the new realities of emerging conflicts of the twenty-first century. Brose states the U.S. is falling behind its principal competitor, China – noting the PRC is a greater political, economic, and military challenge to our…