The popular notion of war is that it is fought en masse by the people of one side versus the other. But the reality today is that both state and non-state actors are increasingly looking to shift the burdens of war to surrogates. Surrogate warfare describes a patron's outsourcing of the strategic, operational, or tactical burdens of warfare, in whole or in part, to human and/or technological substitutes in order to minimize the costs of war. This phenomenon ranges from arming rebel groups, to the use of armed drones or cyber propaganda by non-militaries. This public discussion will convene the authors, Dr Andreas Krieg and Dr Jean-Marc Rickli, of the newly published book Surrogate Warfare, as well as one or two discussants. The concept of surrogate warfare will be introduced with concrete examples relating to the use of surrogates in the Middle East as well as the way emerging technologies increasingly allow technology to become a surrogate on its own. A critical discussion of the concept then opens the floor for question and answer.
More information on the book: http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/surrogate-warfare
