In a recent meeting with the Deseret News editorial board, Aaron Starks, the chief executive officer of Utah’s own 47G, provided a troubling picture of world affairs.
“We tend to think of defense as hardware,” he said, noting this is no longer accurate. “We may never live in a day where Russian artillery rolls onto U.S. soil, but we go to war via our cyber networks every day of the week.”
47G is a consortium of aerospace and defense industries with more than 250 members, and growing, and growing.
Starks said this invisible-but-damaging war is against the usual suspects — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. But it’s also against some “frenemies.” The world is indeed becoming complicated, he said. It’s also becoming increasingly dangerous, and the United States and its allies are falling behind.
Europe is jittery
Certainly, the people of Denmark don’t have to be told this. They are waging cyberwar as well as a possible hardware war. Recently, drones were spotted flying over Copenhagen.
NPR reports that people’s nerves are frayed. Buzzing noises there keep them awake at night. City dwellers are stocking up on supplies and making plans to flee to friends and relatives in the country, or to leave Denmark entirely, if necessary.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, called this “the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War.”
Danes, like Swedes and Finns to their north, are becoming jittery about the prospects of a Russian invasion. Some in Denmark wish their government would shoot down the drones.
Germans are not as hesitant. Their government has given the OK to do just that after drones recently buzzed around the Munich airport.
On Oct. 2, so many unidentified drones entered Munich airspace that 17 flights were canceled and 15 others were diverted, inconveniencing about 3,000 passengers. The next day, more drones came, forcing the airport to close for a while.
Were they Russian, or did someone else stage this just to cause mischief? Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied any intention of attacking NATO countries. Much of Europe is unconvinced.
Estonia isn’t taking any chances. The Associated Press reports it is building a fence along its border with Russia, as well as ditches meant to deter tanks. But these won’t stop drones or cyber attacks.
In September, about 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace; Polish forces opened fire. The French news organization Le Monde said this incursion was immediately followed by a massive internet disinformation campaign, pushing the Russian narrative that Ukraine had instigated the attack in an effort to draw Poland into the war.
A few days later, Romania scrambled fighter jets to intercept drones crossing into its airspace.
Is the U.S. behind?
Meanwhile, in the United States, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, chair of the Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation Subcommittee, told a hearing in May, “It’s time to stop talking about preparing for conflict because we are already in one. I, for one, believe that it’s now time that we start acting like it.”
He went on to express concerns about how far behind the United States is in this war. The concern, he said, is heightened because “our adversaries are clearly not deterred from acting against us, and we are clearly not meeting our potential in developing the cyber capability, capacity and posture that is commensurate with the threat.”
That’s from the military side. The civilian side seems even less prepared, particularly when it comes to battling foreign disinformation campaigns carefully designed to appeal to the biases of one side or the other in petty culture-war disputes.
Utah becomes a leader in defense
Officials at 47G say aerospace and defense industries now make up 20% of the state’s economy. The group is planning a Zero Gravity Summit next month that is expected to draw up to 3,000 industry professionals, public sector leaders and innovators.
It is good for the state to become a leader in such a rapidly growing and important industry. And it’s not all gloom and warfare. Utah is poised to become a leader in air taxis and similar transportation by the time the 2034 Olympics are staged here.
A year or so ago, some pundits speculated that World War III had already begun. They pointed to parallels between today and the late 1930s. And yet, it’s as hard now to say this with any certainty as it was then.
But as our visitors from 47G went on to describe vulnerable and antiquated U.S. energy infrastructure and the dangers from artificial intelligence and nanotechnologies, it became clear that, whether it has begun or not, a modern global war won’t look like anything from the past.