When technology redefines warfare: from World War II computing to military Artificial Intelligence
- Paula Lazzari
- Mar 18
- 4 min read
Note: The views expressed in this text are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.
The recent escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran is taking place at a moment when the relationship between technological innovation and armed conflict has returned to the center of international politics. Contemporary conflicts have incorporated low-cost drones, autonomous systems, and advanced data analysis tools into military operations. These developments reflect a broader historical pattern: wars often accelerate technological innovation, and these innovations, in turn, transform how conflicts are conducted.¹
This process is not limited to the simple idea that war “stimulates” technological progress. Armed conflicts concentrate resources, reorganize scientific priorities, and reduce institutional constraints on experimentation. Technologies developed in this context rarely remain confined to the military domain. They tend to diffuse into the economy and civil infrastructures, later returning to the strategic field in transformed forms. The interaction between war and technological innovation thus constitutes one of the recurring drivers of power transformation in the international system.²
The origins of modern computing illustrate this process. During World War II, the need to rapidly process large volumes of cryptographic information led to the development of Colossus at Bletchley Park, used to decipher German communications encoded by the Lorenz system. Colossus is often described as one of the first operational programmable electronic digital computers.³ A few years later, in the United States, ENIAC was developed for the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory with the aim of calculating artillery ballistic tables.⁴ These systems were designed to solve specific military problems, but they helped establish the technical foundations of contemporary computing.
The Cold War deepened this relationship between technology and national security by institutionalizing state funding for strategic research. The creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the United States consolidated a model of cooperation among universities, industry, and government focused on technological innovation of strategic interest. One of the best-known outcomes of this process was ARPANET, an experimental network funded by the Department of Defense whose first data transmission occurred in 1969 between the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute.⁵ Similarly, the Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense starting in the 1970s for military navigation, later becoming an essential infrastructure for transportation, logistics, and digital communication.⁶
For much of the twentieth century, the flow of technological diffusion followed a relatively clear direction: technologies developed in military programs were gradually transferred to civilian applications. In recent decades, however, this dynamic has become more complex. The private sector has come to lead key areas of technological innovation, particularly in software, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data analytics. As a result, technologies initially developed for commercial applications have been incorporated with increasing speed into military operations.
The U.S. Department of Defense explicitly recognized this shift by launching Project Maven in 2017, an initiative focused on the use of computer vision algorithms capable of analyzing large volumes of images and videos collected by military sensors.⁷ Projects of this kind reflect a deeper transformation in the organization of military power. Strategic competition increasingly depends on the institutional capacity to collect, process, and transform large quantities of information into operational intelligence.
Recent conflicts highlight this transformation. Studies on the war between Russia and Ukraine show the extensive use of commercial drones adapted for military purposes, as well as the growing importance of commercial satellite imagery in monitoring and conducting operations.⁸ The contemporary battlefield increasingly depends on a hybrid ecosystem in which traditional military systems operate alongside technologies produced by private companies and global innovation chains.
Artificial intelligence represents a further step in this process. At its current stage, its main impact does not lie in the complete replacement of human combatants by autonomous systems, but in enhancing the capacity for data analysis, pattern recognition, and support for military decision-making.⁹ Still, the advancement of these technologies raises important questions. International organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross warn that autonomous systems and algorithmic tools may accelerate the use of force and reduce the time available for human evaluation in conflict situations, creating significant challenges for the application of international humanitarian law.¹⁰
These transformations indicate that the technological dimension of contemporary warfare is not limited to the development of new weapons. It also involves broader changes in the institutional structure of innovation and in how information is integrated into strategic decision-making processes. Information technologies alter the battlefield not only by increasing precision or destructive capacity, but by changing the speed at which data are converted into operational decisions.
Recent international crises should be interpreted in light of this broader transformation. The historical development of computing, the internet, and satellite navigation systems demonstrates that war has played a central role in shaping the technological infrastructure of the contemporary world. In the twenty-first century, however, civilian and military innovation have become increasingly interdependent, reducing the boundaries between the digital economy, informational infrastructure, and strategic capability.
The central question for the future of international security is not only which states possess the most advanced technologies, but which are able to integrate technological innovation, data processing, and strategic decision-making most effectively. In an international environment increasingly structured by information flows and automation, the ability to transform data into strategic action is likely to become one of the main determinants of power in the twenty-first century.
References
Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).
Alex Roland, War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
B. Jack Copeland (ed.), Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Paul Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999).
Elliot Kaplan e Christopher Hegarty, Understanding GPS: Principles and Applications (Boston: Artech House, 2005).
U.S. Department of Defense, “Project Maven Industry Day”, 2017.
CSIS, Insights from the Russia–Ukraine War (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2025).
Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018).
International Committee of the Red Cross, Autonomous Weapon Systems: Technical, Military, Legal and Humanitarian Aspects (Geneva, 2021).
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