Technology Makes War Inevitable

Here's the thing about technology and war that nobody wants to admit...

Every tool we've ever invented has two edges. Fire warms the home, fire burns the village. The knife cuts bread, the knife cuts throats. And somewhere between discovering how to sharpen a rock and splitting the atom, we convinced ourselves we were getting more civilized.

We weren't.

We were just getting better at the game.

Listen – technology doesn't make war inevitable. That's giving too much credit to the tools and not enough blame to the hand holding them. What technology does is remove friction. It makes the ancient human impulse towards violence more efficient, more distant, more... scalable.

You can hate your neighbour and throw a rock. Or you can hate a million people you've never met and press a button.

The distance does something to us. It abstracts the consequences.

I think about this often – how we went from looking into someone's eyes before taking their life to launching drones from air-conditioned rooms thousands of miles away. The violence hasn't changed. Just the proximity.

And with that distance comes a dangerous math: easier to start, harder to stop.

But here's where it gets interesting. Technology also connects us. The same internet that coordinates military operations also lets a kid in Mumbai talk to a kid in Michigan about their shared love of bad horror movies. We see each other's humanity now in ways our ancestors never could.

That should matter... right?

Except it doesn't seem to. Because technology amplifies everything – including tribalism, fear, and the oldest story we know: us versus them.

Maybe the real problem isn't that technology makes war inevitable. Maybe it's that technology reveals what was always inevitable about us. We're pattern-matching machines wrapped in ancient wiring, trying to navigate a world that changes faster than our evolutionary firmware can handle. The same brain that kept us alive in small tribes on the savannah is now dealing with nuclear codes and AI weapons systems.

The mismatch is terrifying.

So no – technology doesn't make war inevitable. But it does make it easier. And in the gap between "easier" and "necessary," we keep finding excuses.

Better weapons for defence. Stronger walls for peace. More surveillance for safety.

Each generation tells itself the same story: this time will be different.

It never is.

The question isn't whether technology makes war inevitable. The question is whether we'll ever develop the wisdom to match our cleverness. Whether we'll create technologies of consciousness as rapidly as we create technologies of destruction.

Because right now? We're all driving sports cars with the emotional maturity of teenagers.

And that... that should keep you up at night.