Authority, Automation, and the New Fog of War

Andrew Liptak’s Deficiency Agent and Candace Rondeaux’s The Algorithmic Fog of War, featured in Future Tense Fiction by the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination and Issues in Science and Technology, a joint endeavor between Arizona State University and the National Academy of Sciences, converge on a central problem confronting modern conflict. They explore how decision-making authority shifts when humans rely on opaque, automated systems under conditions of uncertainty. Liptak’s fiction explores the social and institutional consequences of delegating judgment to artificial agents designed to compensate for human limitations, while Rondeaux examines how AI-enabled warfare and algorithmic decision tools complicate accountability, escalation control, and command judgment in real-world conflicts. Together, these works illuminate why questions of human–machine interaction, autonomy, and control are core issues for irregular warfare, gray zone competition, and contemporary military operations. This pairing underscores how emerging technologies are reshaping the cognitive and organizational dimensions of war long before they reshape the battlefield itself.

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