The Duck of Minerva

Heather Roff

Senior Research Analyst at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Fellow at Brookings Institution and Associate Fellow at University of Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence

Recent Posts

Kill Webs: The Wicked Problem of Future Warfighting

Kill Webs: The Wicked Problem of Future Warfighting

by Heather Roff | 21 June, 2016 | , , ,

The common understanding in military circles is that the more data one has, the more information one possess.  More information leads to better intelligence, and better intelligence produces greater situational awareness.  Sun Tzu rightly understood this cycle two millennia ago: “Intelligence is the essence in warfare—it is what the armies depend upon in their every move.” Of course, for him, intelligence could only come from people, not from various types of sensor data, such as radar signatures or ship’s pings. Pursuing the data-information-intelligence chain is the intuition behind the...

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Adaptability or Compliance? Modular Weapons and the Rules of International Law

Adaptability or Compliance? Modular Weapons and the Rules of International Law

by Heather Roff | 27 April, 2016 | , ,

  As many who read this blog will note, I am often concerned with the impact of weapons development on international security, human rights and international law.   I’ve spent much time considering whether autonomous weapons violate international law, or will run us head long into arms races, or will give some incentives to oppress their peoples.   Recently, however, I’ve started to think a bit less about future (autonomous) weapons and a bit more about new configurations of existing (semi-autonomous) weapons, and what those new configurations may portend.   One article that came out...

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Distance and Death: Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Force Protection

Distance and Death: Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Force Protection

by Heather Roff | 10 April, 2016 | , ,

In 1941 Heinrich Himmler, one of the most notorious war criminals and mass murders, was faced with an unexpected problem: he could not keep using SS soldiers to murder the Jewish population because the SS soldiers were  breaking psychologically.   As August Becker, a member of the Nazi gas-vans, recalls, “Himmler wanted to deploy people who had become available as a result of the suspension of the euthanasia programme, and who, like me, were specialists in extermination by gassing, for the large-scale gassing operations in the East which were just beginning. The reason for this was that the...

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Autonomous Weapons and Incentives for Oppression

Autonomous Weapons and Incentives for Oppression

by Heather Roff | 13 March, 2016 | , ,

Much of the present debate over autonomous weapons systems (AWS) focuses on their use in war. On one side, scholars argue that AWS will make war more inhumane (Asaro, 2012), that the decision to kill must be a human being’s choice (Sharkey, 2010), or that they will make war more likely because conflict will be less costly to wage with them (Sparrow, 2009). On the other side, scholars argue that AWS will make war more humane, as the weapons will be greater at upholding the principles of distinction and proportionality (Müller and Simpson, 2014), as well as providing greater force protection...

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Strategic Surprise? Or The Foreseeable Future

Strategic Surprise? Or The Foreseeable Future

by Heather Roff | 15 February, 2016 |

When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the US was taken off guard.  Seriously off guard.  While Eisenhower didn't think the pointy satellite was a major strategic threat, the public perception was that it was.  The Soviets could launch rockets into space, and if they could do that, they could easily launch nuclear missiles at the US.  So, aside from a damaged US ego about losing the “space race,” the strategic landscape shifted quickly and the “missile gap” fear was born. The US's “strategic surprise” and the subsequent public backlash caused the US to embark on a variety of science and...

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The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of High Tech War

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of High Tech War

by Heather Roff | 29 December, 2015 | ,

  In fall of 2014, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his plan to maintain US superiority against rising powers (i.e. Russia and China). His claim was that the US cannot lose its technological edge – and thus superiority – against a modernizing Russia and a rapidly militarizing China. To ensure this edge, he called for the “third Offset Strategy.” The previous two offset strategies were premised on Cold War rivalry and the belief that one can outspend the other through arms races. The first offset desired to gain dominance over Soviet Russia’s feared advantage in manpower...

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The Politics of Resettlement: Migrants vs. Refugees

The Politics of Resettlement: Migrants vs. Refugees

by Heather Roff | 2 September, 2015 | , ,

We are witnessing the horror of war. We see it every day, with fresh pictures of refugees risking their lives on the sea, rather than risking death by shrapnel, bombs, assassination or enslavement. For the past four years, over 11 million Syrians have left their homes; 4 million of them have left Syria altogether. Each day thousands attempt to get to a safer place, a better life for themselves and their children. Each day, the politics of resettlement and the fear of terrorism play their part. The last major resettlement campaign in the US came after the Vietnam War. Over a 20-year period 2...

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One Size Fits Few

One Size Fits Few

by Heather Roff | 13 August, 2015 |

With all of the recent essays on the Duck this summer about the job market, citation indexes, and lack of confidence, there seems to be a brewing undercurrent about the anxiety of another academic year. Some of us maybe facing down a PhD defense and the job market for the first time, some of us compiling our pre-tenure review files, and some of us just generally feeling uneasy about a new area of research or a class we’ve never taught. Some maybe anxious about a new job they’ve recently arrived at. I can feel the collective tension reading through the posts and their comments. I’d like to...

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Civil(ian) Military Integration & The Coming Problem for International Law

Civil(ian) Military Integration & The Coming Problem for International Law

by Heather Roff | 9 July, 2015 | , , , ,

In late May, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) released a white paper on China’s Military Strategy. This public release is the first of its kind, and it has received relatively little attention in the broader media.   While much of the strategy is of no big surprise (broad and sweeping claims to reunification of Taiwan with mainland China, China’s rights to territorial integrity, self-defense of “China’s reefs and islands,” a nod to “provocative actions” by some of its “offshore neighbors” (read Japan)), there was one part of the strategy that calls for a little more scrutiny:...

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Deterrence in Cyberspace and the OPM Hack

Deterrence in Cyberspace and the OPM Hack

by Heather Roff | 24 June, 2015 | , ,

I have yet to weigh in on the recent hack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).   Mostly this is due to two reasons.  First is the obvious one for an academic: it is summer! But the second, well, that is due to the fact that as most cyber events go, this one continues to unfold. When we learned of the OPM hack earlier this month, the initial figures were 4 million records. That is, 4 million present and former government employees’ personal records were compromised. This week, we’ve learned that it is more like 18 million.   While some argue that this hack is not something to be...

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