1985 That's the technology that can beam radio frequencies to destroy missile and aircraft components, scramble radar screens, and even alter human mind functions. It all sounds like another chapter in Star Wars controversy ... then military affairs specialist can bring this issue into focus with this report. Imagine the implications of a weapon with no visible trace -- a weapon that could knock out tanks, ships, and planes as fast as the speed of light. The same technology, with modifications, could disorient and even tranquilize military personnel, rendering them virtually helpless in the battle zone. These are the new weapons of war. For the past 40 years, the world has been riveted by the threat of nuclear war, and more recently by the prospect of space defenses using lasers and other modern technologies. But while both sides of the Geneva Summit will be focusing on these matters, progress is being made in even newer weapons that could render any arms agreement relatively useless. Lightning is the most dramatic form of energy to be found in nature. Scientists have succeeded in creating limited types of artificial lightning. And some think that these could be the forerunners of a new type of directed-energy weapon, part of a family of weapons that operate within the radio frequency segment of the electromagnetic spectrum, and are thus referred to as radio frequency weapons.These weapons have other uses as well.For instance Zbigniew Brzezinski adviser to Kennedy, Johnson and Carter's Presidential administrations predicted in 1970 that tomorrows tectnatronic society would exploit communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.Human beings would become increasingly manipulable and malleable and to take advantage of biochemical means of human control.

Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett is a Senior Strategic Researcher in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College. Currently, Thomas is on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he is working with OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that link change in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats. Thomas has published a number of articles explaining these strategic concepts, which he presents comprehensively in a briefing entitled, "A Future Worth Creating: Defense Transformation in the New Security Environment." At the Naval War College, he serves as Director of the NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy so as to expand the U.S. Military's--and specifically, the U.S. Navy's--vision of where and how it can wield maximum influence across the international security environment of the Era of Globalization. Thomas has written for Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Providence Journal, and published a book with Praeger entitled Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (1992) In December 2002, he was selected by the editorial staff of Esquire as the "The Strategist" for their special edition entitled, "The Best and Brightest," which introduced a few dozen people "who are changing our world." Thomas has a BA (Honors) from the University of Wisconsin. Following Wisconsin, he earned an AM in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University. This presentation is one of many from the IT Conversations archives of Pop!Tech 2004 held in Camden, Maine, October 21-23, 2004