Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

Along the way, these cheaper drones brought wholly new actors into military conflicts – battlefield warfare became affordable to any number of terrorist groups and small states. Military drones represent the inverse of traditional flagship military technologies – the ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and stealth fighters that remain the privilege of a handful of rich nations with mature defence industries. Increasingly, anyone can build a drone army. In a 2018 attack, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targeted several Turkish government locations with drones that anyone could buy on Amazon for under $300, having packed them with explosives.50 Then, in 2019, Houthi rebels from Yemen launched drone attacks against the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, stopping about half of the kingdom’s output for a day.51 In the language of military theory, the development of drones has driven an increase in ‘asymmetric’ conflict – between powerful, well-established actors like nation states, and upstart combatants with fewer resources.