We Can Rebuild Him: Mapping the (Human) Soldier in Network-Centric Warfare

摘要

In a draft glossary for Joint Vision 2020, the United States Department of Defense states "network-centric warfare (NCW) provides the theory for warfare in the Information Age [and is] no less than the embodiment of an Information Age transformation of the DOD." This paper asks: if NCW is the dominant theory of warfare in the 21st century, how is the human soldier redefined in the digital warfare space? From a dataset that includes Congressional, military, and think-tank documents about information warfare, this qualitative analysis evaluates the discursive construction of the emerging digital soldier. Of particular interest is the way in which military planners both define and push the boundaries of soldier identity and combat performance via the use of advanced information technology and new warfighting concepts. The war on terrorism, and the fiscal pressure in the United States to maximize soldier combat performance within smaller and more efficient units, provides the military with a cogent rationale for transformation to an information-age warfighting paradigm. However, the paper concludes that the normalization of the soldier-as-cyborg raises crucial social and ethical issues with respect to our expectations of human performance enhancement through advanced information and bio/molecular technologies.