Book project: War by Numbers

My book project War by Numbers: Conflict Management and the Mathematization of Violence examines the widespread, but mostly unquestioned, assumption that we can leverage science and technology to address social and political issues, including problems as tragic as war. Drawing on Hans Morgenthau’s classic realist critique of scientific rationalism, I investigate how ‘war’ and ‘armed conflict’ are turned into governable and controllable issues through quantification and formalization.

To illustrate how war became governable by putting it into numbers, I trace three central aspects of what we think makes war. First, body counts have become a central measure to assess the magnitude of wars and focus advocacy on war’s prevention. Second, modern war is marked by bombing, where yields, blast effects, and precision guidance are measured (or intentionally not measured) in a science of accuracy. Finally, in the wake of rapid developments of AI and machine learning technology, a range of actors in the conflict prevention sphere put their hope into algorithms (bytes) for better, faster, and more accurate conflict predictions.

While bodies and bombs are how we traditionally think about the face of war, bytes seem to give it a high-tech aura in the 21st century. However, my research shows that all three buy into the same illusion that science and technology can provide us with the “magic formula” to finally end war. In this way, it helps us understand better the continuous push to resolve socio-political problems through scientific and technological means as the central rationale of modern governance.