The Fog of Tech: Why the Future of War Can’t Escape the Past

Foreign Affairs · Mara Karlin · 2026-10-20 04:00 UTC

Mara Karlin, a defense policy expert who served as senior national-security official in multiple American administrations, makes an authoritative case that war planners tend to be overconfident about their ability to predict how new tools will shape the battlefield—blinding them to the unchanging realities of war. Using examples from Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran, Karlin shows how this "technology trap" leads to false assumptions about the future of war.

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