No emerging tech impact.
Talmadge 19 [Caitlin Talmadge is an Associate Professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign at Georgetown University, as well as Senior Non-Resident Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. "Emerging Technology and Intra-War Escalation Risks: Evidence from the Cold War, Implications for Today. " https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2019.1631811, published 9-27-2019]
Will emerging technologies such as cyber, precision, stealth, and remote sensing cause future conflict escalation?1 Widespread and influential commentary suggests that the answer is an unequivocal yes. For example, a prominent think tank report warns that ‘several new technologies,’ particularly cyber and robotics, ‘are changing the way deterrence and escalation operate between the United States and other actors’ in potentially dangerous ways.2 Another well-known expert argues that the speed, precision, and range of hypersonic vehicles will augur ‘a new and potentially dangerous arms race . . . where a crisis could touch off rapid and uncontrollable escalation.’
3 A former US defense undersecretary similarly worries that ‘emerging new military capabilities – cyber, space, missile defense, longrange strike, and . . . autonomous systems – are increasing uncertainties associated with strategic stability and creating potential slippery slopes of escalation. Unless measures are taken to cushion the consequences of these military trends,’ he writes, ‘conflict may become more probable and escalation more dramatic and severe.’
Yet the future relationship between emerging technologies and escalation may not be as straightforward as these statements imply. The debate about emerging technologies tends to portray them as a powerful independent variable – an exogenous factor that is both necessary and sufficient to cause conflict escalation. This paper argues instead that emerging technologies are more likely to function as intervening variables; they may be necessary for escalation to happen in some cases, but they alone are not sufficient, and sometimes they will not even be necessary. The strongest drivers of escalation will actually lie elsewhere, in the realms of politics and strategy. As a result, concern about new technologies is warranted, but determinism is not. An overemphasis on the dangers of technology alone ignores the critical role of political and strategic choices in shaping the impact of technology, and also could lead to a misplaced faith in arms control or other means of trying to stuff the technological genie back in the bottle.5