*John Armitage*: Let's talk about your theoretical efforts to
understand and interpret the Kosovo war in _Strategie de la
deception_. Is the campaign in the air the only important element
that other theorists should pay attention to?
*Paul Virilio*: Let me emphasise the following points about the
Kosovo War. First, while the United States (US) can view the war as a
success, Europe must see it as a failure for it and, in particular,
for the institutions of the European Union (EU). For the US, the
Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the
Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a
test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of
what I call in _Strategie de la deception_ 'the second deterrence'.
It is, therefore, my firm belief that the US is currently seeking to
revert to the position it held after the triggering of atomic bombs
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 1940s, when the US was the sole
nuclear power. And here I repeat what I suggest in my book. The first
deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the
second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the
information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and
communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I
stress this important point, ~it will no longer be war that is the
continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have
dubbed 'the integral accident'~ that is the continuation of politics
by other means. The automation of warfare has, then, come a long way
since the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Needless to say, none of these
developments will help the plight of the refugees in Kosovo or stop
the actions of the militias operating there. However, the automation
of warfare will allow for the continuation not only of war in the air
but also of the further development of the Pentagon's RMA in the form
of 'Global Information Dominance' (GID) and 'Global Air Power' (GAP).
It is for these reasons that, in my new book, I focus for example on
the use of the 'graphite bomb' to shut off the Serbian electricity
supply as well as the cutting off of the service provision to Serbia
of the EuTelSat television satellite by the EU. And, let me remind
you that the latter action was carried out against the explicit
wishes of the UN. To my mind, therefore, the integral accident, the
automation of warfare, and the RMA are all part of the shift towards
the second deterrence and the explosion of the information bomb. For
me, these developments are revolutionary because, today, the age of
the locally situated bomb such as the atomic bomb has passed. The
atomic bomb provoked a ~specific~ accident. But the information bomb
gives rise to the integral and ~globally constituted accident~. The
globally constituted accident can be compared to what people who work
at the stock exchange call 'systemic risk'. And, of course, we have
already seen some instances of systemic risk in recent times in the
Asian financial crisis. But what sparked off the Asian financial
crisis? Automated trading programmes! Here, then, we meet again the
problems I noted in earlier works with regard to interactivity.
Moreover, it is clear that the era of the information bomb, the era
of aerial warfare, the era of the RMA and global surveillance is also
the era of ~the integral accident~. 'Cyberwar' has nothing to do with
the destruction brought about by bombs and grenades and so on. It is
specifically linked to the information systems of life itself. It is
in this sense that, as I have said many times before, interactivity
is the equivalent of radioactivity. For interactivity effects a kind
of disintegration, a kind of ~rupture~. For me, the Asian financial
crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the
integral accident.