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CHAPTER 1 War’s Character and Nature, and the Stuxnet Trap THE CHARACTER OF WARS AND THE NATURE OF WARFARE War, the policy-oriented use of force against a responding antagonist, is an enduring but unpleasant element in human affairs. Evidence of warfare dates at least as far back as 10,000 BCE. Carl von Clausewitz’s classic On War justifiably remains a landmark work two centuries after its writing, since among other things it explains force and violence as expressions and instruments of policy goals.1 Uncertainty, struggle between human antag- onists responding to one another, and the application of force in pursuit of policy goals continue to describe the fundamental nature of warfare. Military history shows antagonists seeking to gain advantage in conflict, and frequently this involves the use of different methods or tactics, the use of different technologies, and often changes in both tactics and technology in order to make more effective use of the two in concert with one another. Combinations of tactics and technologies include the development of the rectangular 17th-century tercio formation equipped with long pikes and harquebuses and able to advance or retreat with relatively equal felic- ity, oblique order attacks by 18th-century infantry moving in close order and equipped with bayonet-mounted fusil muskets, and the 20th-century emergence of combined arms warfare in which infantry might advance in concert with friendly armored forces and with protection provided by friendly artillery or air components directing firepower against the enemy. The character of combat in these three examples are clearly very distinct: the tercio moves at walking pace and possesses limited organic firepower but can rapidly change direction whereas the close-order infantry launch- ing an oblique attack move at the same pace with greater force but less flexibility, while wielding greater firepower combined arms units can move more swiftly and in concert deliver devastatingly larger amounts of