The spread of cheap drones, commercial sensors and artificial intelligence is eroding the military advantage that underpinned U.S. dominance after the Cold War, according to University of Chicago political scientist Robert A. Pape.
In an interview with Energi Media, Pape described the change as a “second precision revolution.” The first emerged during the 1991 Gulf War, when the United States combined stealth aircraft, satellite navigation, precision-guided weapons and advanced computing to defeat Iraqi forces far more quickly and with far fewer U.S. casualties than many planners had expected.
Pape argues that the latest revolution reverses part of that advantage. Technologies that were once expensive and restricted to advanced militaries are now embedded in mass-market electronics. GPS, sensors, processors and increasingly artificial intelligence can be assembled into relatively inexpensive drones and other precision systems.
Ukraine, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran show how those technologies can give weaker actors new leverage, he said. Their objective does not have to be conventional military victory. The ability to threaten ships, infrastructure or expensive military assets can increase insurance costs, reduce traffic and create enough uncertainty to disrupt trade.
Pape said this makes strategic chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Taiwan Strait more vulnerable. Globalization depends on predictable movement through those routes. Persistent disruption would increase shipping and insurance costs, encourage larger inventories and redundant supply chains, and reduce some of the efficiencies that helped expand global trade after 1991.
The same dynamic could reshape a conflict over Taiwan. Pape said Taiwan’s growing drone capabilities could allow it to retaliate against a Chinese blockade by threatening shipping and port approaches on the mainland. China would retain overwhelming conventional advantages, but Taiwan could impose significant economic costs without defeating the People’s Liberation Army at sea.
For Canada, Pape sees both opportunity and risk. Secure North American supplies of oil, gas, minerals and other commodities could become more valuable as buyers place a higher premium on reliability. At the same time, he cautioned against assuming that governments can confidently predict the security environment over the 50-to-100-year life of major linear infrastructure.
Asked what advice he would give Prime Minister Mark Carney on infrastructure investment, Pape favoured flexibility. The technologies driving the second precision revolution are continuing to become cheaper and more capable, he said, making long-term geopolitical assumptions increasingly difficult.
Pape also argued that Canada and other middle powers will face a broader strategic challenge as U.S. military preeminence declines. The post-Cold War system allowed allies to depend heavily on American power to contain crises and protect the commercial networks on which their economies rely.
A world with weaker American dominance would not simply give those countries more autonomy, he said. It would also expose them more directly to the economic consequences of conflicts elsewhere. For Canada, adapting to that instability may become one of the defining strategic problems of the coming decade.
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