Can The U.S. Impose A Naval Blockade On China?

A U.S. Naval Blockade of China? -- Rory Medcalf, The Diplomat

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was much debate about whether war between major powers in Asia was even imaginable. It is a disturbing sign of how much the strategic environment has deteriorated that analysts are now starting to write publicly about how such a war might be fought.

There is a growing literature on the U.S. concept of Air-Sea Battle, including the question of whether its use of conventional strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland would lead to wider escalation. Presumably this has struck a chord in the Chinese security debate – raising questions about the efficacy of an anti-access strategy against U.S. maritime forces – and perhaps that was the point.

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My Comment: I call this "thinking the unthinkable".

Researchers Turn To Artificial Intelligence And Real Data to Improve War Games

Image: VIRTUAL WAR IS HELL University of Maryland researchers are developing a virtual world designed to help intelligence analysts simulate the consequences of their antiterrorism policies. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

From Scientific American:

University of Maryland researchers have created a virtual world they hope intelligence analysts will use to develop antiterrorism policies.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs.

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My Comment: I guess this will be the closest that we will ever come to mimicking real war/conflict/terrorism scenarios.

Building Real Security With Virtual Worlds

Advances in computerized modeling and prediction of group behavior, together with improvements in video game graphics, are making possible virtual worlds in which defense analysts can explore and predict results of many different possible military and policy actions, say computer science researchers. (Credit: iStockphoto/Simon Askham)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 27, 2009) — Advances in computerized modeling and prediction of group behavior, together with improvements in video game graphics, are making possible virtual worlds in which defense analysts can explore and predict results of many different possible military and policy actions, say computer science researchers at the University of Maryland in a commentary published in the November 27 issue of the journal Science.

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My Comment: I thought my simple games of "World Conquest" were cool to play on my computer .... but these war strategies/games must be awesome.