An instructor at West Point writing at the Modern War Institute, Major Travis Onischuk wrote that American leaders are focusing more on getting their soldiers WiFi over water. In the event of a catastrophic and bloody war, he argues that these amenities will quickly vanish to the detriment of unit performance. The major’s piece came out the same day as a Defense Institute Study that did cite a potential crisis in a future war with China or Russia. Charges like that are not uncommon and they can often be a ploy to secure more funding than accurate research.
Overall, I was extremely unimpressed with the author’s arguments based on a lack of evidence and my vast personal experience. The author didn’t present any evidence that Americans are prioritizing WiFi over water except for one anecdotal experience in 2015. After reading about his feelings of Operation Cobra, he seems to have sour grapes that he couldn’t make things as tough on his soldiers as he wanted. Since this is the crux of his argument I was upset to read that his position mostly relies on his perception that his platoon leaders cared more about WiFi than the logistics officer who cared about the water system. Even assuming that perception is correct, and leaving aside that we are hearing one example filtered through someone with a clear bias, there are other reasons for the mismatch in priorities than the ones the author gave. (That is why citing research and scientific studies tend to be more powerful.)
It could be as simple as pure water could be obtained a number of ways from boiling to adding purification tables and wasn’t a fatal flaw in the exercises that the author makes it seem. The same can’t be said for WiFi which needs dedicated servers (which are likely the same kind of equipment that powers an increasingly technological force). Moreover, the company leaders asking about WiFi were most likely responding to concerns in their immediate area of control, such as the morale of men under their command who legitimately missed their families compared to the logistics officer that just had to worry about the hardware arriving on a delayed ship. The author doesn’t provide any substantive evidence that prioritizing WiFi hurts combat capabilities. Nor did he provide any evidence that the facetime with family or availability of tablet games does not provide boosts to morale. Above all, a single personal experience without evidence as back up can and is trumped by rival personal experience.
Based on my reading compared to my time in the military, this mostly seems like a typical ax-grinding rant about the video game generation that I’ve heard for 20 years, and should have been dispelled by the military’s performance during the war on terror. Victor David Hanson, for example, wrote in his landmark book “Carnage and Culture,” after praising the representatives of “stalwart American mandhood” who died at the battle of Midway, that he “wonder[ed] if an America of suburban, video-playing Nicoles, Ashleys, and Jasons shall ever see their like again.” This seemed like a needless swipe at the same generation that chased Bin Laden from Tora Bora and toppled Saddam Hussein. I grew up playing Game Boy and I have a career, own my own home, and successfully served my country in the Marine Corps. Many young people who play lots of apps or take their cellphones out into the field and generally care about WiFi are still combat-ready soldiers, despite the complaints of people like Major Onischuk.
