The Battlefield is dead

War is evolving in a weird way.

In the last few decades, the US population stopped tolerating human casualties, so now every mission must have overwhelming force to minimize the chance of losing a single soldier. This has caused the cost of missions to skyrocket. (Forget about the opportunity cost of using that money to feed people or provide health care.)

Drones have "fixed" this problem by removing humans from the offensive entirely. As a side effect, there is no longer a "front" to the war. (The point of this article.)

You would think that the front is now everywhere. But that's not the case.

You'd think that the front is now targeted at specific strategic targets. That's kind of the case, but not really.

In actuality, the front is now determined by whatever can maximize media coverage to sway popular opinion. Planet Money did an interesting episode on this recently: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/25/546127444/episo...

> When NPR reporter Gregory Warner arrives in a town on the Ukrainian front lines, residents try to keep their distance. 'Don't come here,' they say. 'When journalists come, the bombs fall."