3Faces%20of%20the%20Dragon

general and a non-state actor in some instances can help create trade war; financial war;
new types of terror warfare; ecological, psychological, and smuggling war; media, drug,
network, and technological war; and fabricated, resource, culture, and international law
warfare. 591 Technology is no longer the main factor. A new concept of weapons implies
using things that initially benefit mankind to harm mankind. 592
These “kinder weapons,” the authors note, may try to paralyze or undermine, but they do not intend
to produce casualties. They may compose a watershed between the old and new weapons of war. 593
Qiao and Wang state that almost any new development can become a weapon of sorts today: thus,
China’s awareness of how new developments can be applied must expand. 594 For example the socalled
“Internet of Things” (IOT) is a research effort to enable networks that can not only connect
people but can also realize communications between objects. 595 China’s military is studying how to
apply the IOT to joint operations and support systems in order to raise the operational capabilities of
units. The focus is on combining battlefield situation perceptions, intelligence analysis and
assessments, and operational processes and control mechanisms to pierce through the fog of war. This
will bring about the coordination of all systems and elements. The IOT is one of the five major
emerging state strategic industries in China. It is also hoped that the IOT will provide:
An all-dimension early warning system that makes up for shortcomings in satellite, radar,
and other long-range reconnaissance equipment
The use of nanobiosensors and other sensing technologies in the development of a nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapon monitoring network system
The further application of high-speed logistic systems and real-time medical support. 596
The development of an IOT capability is important for the military and is expanding in the civilian
field as well. Recently the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation set up the Academy
of Applications of the Internet of Things Technologies. It is hoped that the academy will create a
competitive IOT enterprise that can drive the industry’s development. It is a move designed to better
fulfill political, economic, and social responsibility. 597
The second evolving concept of weaponry, dubbed NCW, includes man-made earthquakes,
tsunamis, and other weather disasters, subsonic waves, new biological and chemical weapons,
kinetic-energy weapons, directed-energy weapons, subsonic weapons, geophysical weapons, solarenergy
weapons, meteorological weapons, and genetic weapons. Genetic weapons can harm people
by attacking their biological inheritance. Computer viruses and meteorological weapons are two
other examples of NCW as are incapacitating weapons, which can blind combatants or cause
psychological barriers. 598
NCW contain many information-age characteristics. They employ a greater technical domain and
offer a broader set of operational targets and dramatic results than traditional weapons. A broad
definition for NCW is “a class of new weapons with working principles and kill mechanisms that
differ from traditional weapons, that possess unique operational efficiency, and that are currently