Beyond War: 4th Industrial War

A civilization in which the individual must rely upon others to refine and process the goods and food, fuel, and shelter required for their family is the 3rd Industrial Era.

When a technology advances to the point it no longer requires labor to produce complex goods, gather resources, and refine material required for sophisticated technology - including the knowledge and means to create the tools of manufacture and operate them without aid or other people, that is known as the 4th Industrial Era.

Some cultures confuse this with 'automation' which is the employment of machines to perform work and carry out complex repetitive precision tasks. Automation, alone, does not encompass the 4th Industrial Era.

Where most civilizations cannot access one percent of natural resources, a 4th Generation Advanced Warfighter may collect all the materials on a planet-wide scale in minutes. Natural resources are therefore not the objective or in short supply to such remote operating tools and technology. Fighting over resources, therefore, is pointless.

The value of labor as a means of communication, manufacturing, craftsmanship, or collective knowledge is thus obsolete, as is the need to accumulate population centers to develop and refine expert workers and sustain industrial output.

Human civilization which is morally and mentally dependent upon 3rd generation specialization and economic deprivation of scarcity economics are not equipped to assimilate with this new model of 4th Generation liberty. Their reaction is very similar to the prior advent of cities and naval travel as an extension of their primitive mythology than a change in moral and psychological identity.

The conflict of a 4th Industrial War is one in which idealogical and individual offense to interfere with the ordinary privacy and boundaries of an enabled warfighter or their territory are sufficient to deploy advanced weapons and resources in proportion to the threat.