Social media has been weaponised and is now used against nations as a tool of war. John Robb has spent over a decade studying how these new networks represent the new powers – and the new engines of war.

Mark Pesce of The Next Billion Seconds podcast sits down with John Robb to discuss the new information wars.

Mark Pesce:
How has the nature of war changed over the past 30-40 years?

John Robb:
We saw a transition from the large-scale conventional warfare of World War 2, to something that looked more like guerilla warfare…the reason why we had that transition is because of nuclear weapons, which made war between the powers that had nuclear weapons unthinkable… That kept warfare down. After cold war ended and we started to integrate…we saw a reduction in violence…. What we’re seeing is that warfare is shifting to information and to online warfare.

Marshal McLuhuan said the late 60’s that World War 3 would be a guerilla information war where there is no dividing line between the miltary and civilians which basically means that all of us would be involved in this information war to determine who determines how we progress.

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