i i'm going to introduce our

next speaker. i want to make sure they have their full allotted time to deliver their talk and give a little time at the end for q&a as well. and i'm very pleased to introduce doug to wayne hsieh, who is serving currently on the civilian faculty at the us naval academy as an associate of history and hsieh is an expert in many of the military history of the civil war. his publications include the book west pointers and the civil war, which is a study of how west point as an institution shaped the us army before the civil war and during the war as well. he's also coauthor of another book, which i often find myself recommending to people who are looking for a really insightful overview of the military history of the civil war. and that book is called a savage war military history of the civil war. so check that one out. if you're as well.

today, he's to speak to us about observation and and signals from first bull run to the overland campaign. welcome to virginia tech. all all right thanks so much. thank you, dr. quigley. the gracious introduction and staff here for their invitation and, for their hospitality. yeah, i think of the great things about being a civil war historian is you actually can talk to audiences that are not captive. and i know i mean, i think naval academy is maybe even a little bit more that. but a lot of our students, students in general are not always in your classrooms for reasons of choice. right. and they're kind of as is not necessarily a bad dynamic, but it's sort of a different dynamic than being able to to kind of talk to interested audiences and

have that opportunity. i don't think i've done something like this since covid, honestly. i mean, obviously, covid kind of nuked a lot of civil war roundtables, things like that. yes, i know a hybrid option. but honestly, you know, we do so much on screens that i almost this is the first time i've used a powerpoint. and probably if i have images to show my students, i photocopy because i don't i don't like to. we have also a smaller class that's more doable here. but but it it is you know thanks for coming and you and you know it's always always gratifying i think for for academic to to be able to share their their research with with you know, with people who have to do it. you know, it's not part of your you're not obligated and things like that, all right, okay, so let's let's first off, nothing say here is is official in any way or doesn't represent the or the naval academy or the department of defense kind of obligated to do that. you know what this is on c-span and when the jag watches this,

you know, these guys give me thumbs up, virtually whatever. so i just this is all just meet me as an academic historian talking. all right? sorry. all right, so this is this is kind of a let me let me explain why. i am i'm starting this way. this is a talk that's going to be the context of this is and this ive much related to the wonderful, wonderful lecture we had yesterday. it's about technology in many ways. all rit. and that's related to another question that i think important, not just to academic historians, but also kind of to th larger for anyone intesd in thears a whole, is the question of is a civil war matter and what exactly is the importance of technoly? do you have really new revolutionary thnogies that are kind of introduced during the war that are of tremendous importance or is it maybe not so new and not so revolutionary? and how and if it is new, like what is really new about like is

what is actually the the true that has occurred. and so we related to that. what we're going to what i hope to talk about today is, the question of surveil it's the question of being able to see the battlefield or being able to see your opposing forces. right. and also the issue of being able to communicate, inform action between widely dispersed military right. and one of the reasons that this matters, one of the reason this this this question technology is related to that is because you have military ballooning that starts during the civil war. you start to have some aerial observation. right. and you also start to have the telegram just talk about lot. obviously yesterday, although the context of the telegram in this talk will be more not from the strategic level. right. where it's linking to an army commander or an army headquarters, even if it's in the field which is able to utilize a set infrastructure. but how is communicate nation going to be done with with the

units more at the kind of, you know, brigade or even lower level than that? and some of that is going to involve the use of early kind of more mobile battlefield telegraph technologies, but also wigwam signaling, which i'll talk about shortly. right. so, so is that's part of of of you know, you know, the civil war does see that. okay. and, you know, a lot of times the reason i think americans americans, you know, in both the kind of the honestly in both the scholarly and non scholarly sort of examination of the war is one as americans, i think we're interested a technology we kind of a country that pioneered a lot of this stuff, you know, with a written constitution that was kind of made that didn't necessarily organically spring from some kind of historic monarchy and things like that. but also as a country that was obviously, you know, samuel fillmore says famous thing with a telegram. you know, there's a lot of technological change that's been pioneered by the united states and that's still true. and a lot of that is involves for military things. so so some of it is, you know,

some of the interest is does a civil war kind of foretell these things? so me explain this on the left that this is t tower song, this is the movie, by the way. this is a very fny can google the article. i was trying to just find the image i that there's this new york sscraper that looks very spooky for lack of a better term. and the residtsecause it looks like that tower now i remember in the in lord of the rings novel by j.r.r. tolkien was a world war one veteran, by the way,he's this idea that that sauron has ainister eye. there's a sort of this evil eye, and it's ableo ok out. gh and part of the premise of the novel is that the reason that the hobbits are able to destroy the ring, you know, it's that his i is it doesn't see them because they're too small. ok, there's this that they're concle by their kind oby their kind of very small size and kind of a quirky way when i mean, let me read you a you might be wonderi, ll, why this have to do with anything? let me read you a quote.

a ukrainian soldier. this came out, i think, in the kiev maybe a year or so ago. and this is and what he's describing here is a problem that under under, on modern in the current day battlefield, a big problem for both the russian and ukrainian troops is that there is this ubiquitous aerial surveillance. right. due to the fact that drone technology is incredibly cheap. now. and it's it's basically off the shelf and you have it deployed constantly. right. and the problem with is, is that if you're if you're are the russian ukrainian soldier, if you are spotted out in the open right wide one of the drones, you are vulnerable to either the drone dropping a grenade on top of you, which would be not fun or them calling an artillery strike or all sorts of bad things. right. so part of the challenge is be concealed. how do you maintain that concealment and this kind of ubiquitous all these electronic eyes are searching for you and this is this quote, it locks you up. you want to take certain actions, but you can't because the eye of sarang is always

watching that's actually the metaphor. right. so it's a it's kind of a ukrainian thing to to analogize the russian soldiers to orcs and things like that. and this this is this this is an apple, right? what i've done on the right hand side, this is a this is this is from a while ago. actually, this is probably true. 'm sorry, 2016, which i picked it. this is a this is an offici centcom release, official military release. this is from thear against state. but thiss this ahot from an actual american drone feed. right. so a lot of these technologs were pioneered really by the united states, right. this is now, alex, i guess, you ow, seven years old, but are more than that, actually. but and and this is a big part of the challen o modern warfare is that if you're fighting on the modern battlefield, how do you evade surveillance? how do you avoid being seeing? how do you. because to be seeing means that you are then vulnerable to being you know, to being killed. this first step of it's sometimes called the kill chain,

right. and the civil war know has obviously you don't have this kind of very quick reactions during the war. right. but you do have a few things that become important, things like early correction of artillery, what we call indirect fire, or the ability to kind of correct shots from artillery shots. you start to that with balloons and early signaling. it's kind of it's pretty primitive, right. for example, for alexander's artillery bombardment doesn't really work at gettysburg partly because the technology really i mean, fuzes are bad, too. but there's also the ability to do that on a big scale, actually pretty limited. but you start to have the beginning these things. so the question is how is you, you know, to what degree, you know, where is the war fit in this kind of larger story of technological change? now, a few i want to highlight here is that one i want to the argument i kind of want to make is part of it that part of the the the fixation on technology? honestly, is that it's it's of

romanticized because there's a certain point where advanced technology becomes magic. right. so in the 19th century, the whole thing with morse having to deal with with priests think that this is the tool of the devil. you know, if you read nathaniel hawthorne, the house of seven gables, there's a character who's a dragon typist, is a photographer, and people are worried that if someone takes your picture, they're sucking your soul out. okay, right. and so there's a certain idea. there's a certain power that's associated with technology one gets, which is this kind of level of of omniscience almost right. it becomes something like out of out of a magical kind of supernatural state. right. and and and that's why people like to talk about it and one of the things i want to point out is what i'm going to talk mostly about is the limits of the technology. right. that the technology a lot of times there's a lot of have a lot of because we live in a world that's marked by

technological advances. we tend to overstate its effects. and when you see it, it works out in the real world. and the civil war, a lot of times it doesn't work out. it's not as revolutionary as we might be inclined to think right. and then i'll kind of close the circle and point out how even this kind of modern technology now is is, is, is subject to the same limitations of the confusion of the battlefield, of the fact that wars involve two parties and that they can both adapt each other and that they can when one gains a technological advantage, other side will also respond they will not sit and or if they do, they get killed. and then you have you have a next player coming who is able to do that. and that's of, you know, so that a lot of our you know that it isn't actually as revolutionary as we might be. and if there is a lesson want to draw from that is that a lot of times in all spheres of life a lot of times technologists a lot of times overstay state the effects. and that's something that that i think can be seen in the case of

the war. all right. all right. so here. okay. so there is innovation. okay. so this is albert jay meyers on the left, he is born in newburgh in 1828. newburgh is not too far away from the west, where the united states military academy at west point, he becomes the chief signal officer and he becomes a pioneer in these weak signals, which i'll talk about shortly i will come. back to porter alexander, who's actually the who's the source of the quote. that's the title of my talk. but the reason i want to link them here to is, is one i'm sorry. i mean, let me say, meyer is actually a doctor. okay? so he develops this type of signaling, basically this attempt to use signal flags to transmit messages. right. basically, like what, you know, depending on whether it's left or right, it's one or two and then it later becomes a cipher. basically, the transmission of messages basically by people

sitting on a hilltop. right. hawks who are who are waving this signal. fox right. so he's not a west pointer. he's not a regular army officer. he's not he's actually a doctor. okay. and it seems that the source of some of his of these ideas actually come, from his work with with the deaf and the mute, who also need to a way of of of kind of communicate in sort of these kinds of taps, things like that. and he also has spent some time in the new york state telegraph office. so ends up having this kind of interesting, diverse background. i also want to point out that, you know, the profession of medicine is also going through kind of the civil war actually is really important for the professionalization of american medicine. the big official medical history of the war is usually seen as a big marker of the way know doctors used to be trained this very apprentice style. then it become they go to proper schools and they case studies and it becomes less kind of, you know, whoever you you know, you just kind of do the the remedies that they gave. but he's he, you know, so he's not he's not a professional

military officer, but he's part of of kind of this early world that that also includes, like engineers and railroads and the people are setting up the telegraph and telegraph telegraphy and things like that. and he becomes a surgeon in the army, and then he tries to pitch the war department on this idea, signaling. right. and edward porter alexander, who later becomes longstreet's artillery. chief, some of you may have read his memoirs. right, a very important confederate officer, alexander, actually his assistant. right. this is in 1859 that a lot of the stuff that set up and and and by the way i almost forgot during this kind of early tease he's trying to pitch this idea of the army and his the first proposal is actually review made by a board of officers headed by robert e lee, who writes that, quote, he's skeptical of this. he's t he writes that, quote, such a system might be useful as

an accessory to in many circumstances, not as a substitute for the means now employed to convey intelligence, an army in the field, especially on a of battle. lee is basically concerned that you know this idea of sending signals by flags if you're depending on training depending on kind smoke and atmospheric conditions. he feels that this is kind of not really that effective, a way of transmitting information. right. but meyer does get his chance and interestingly enough, i want to point out he actually ends up testing out his system of field signals in new mexico in 1860. now, some of you might ask, well, why would be there be a u.s. army officers in new mexico? well, because the indian wars are going okay. right and they continue. right. so he actually able to use this in kind of this irregular warfare state and that's kind of a more technical term, but, you know, kind of fighting and it's successful. right. and porter alexander is actually his assistant during this. right. and they kind of refine the

system they refine the system of flags i think i have to i have right here's so i'm not you know it's basically do you do you do you wag the flag one side or the other? and then when you do like a the front, that's like a stop. okay. and then basically you have this code for all the letters, right? and then the and then the people, the receiver basically logs all these things now. and the idea is you can transmit them from station to station. right. by none of this is necessarily super new. if any of you know your maritime signals and nelson's famous order, you know, trafalgar and things like that, he's trying to he's trying to innovate with this. obviously. now, what's interesting is, is that the reason i brought up alexander is because. so the war hits, obviously, right? meyer then continues to try to aggressively pitch this idea, and he has some success in the union army. right. but at first bull run, the people who actually meyer isn't able to actually use that much

of his new signal system. it's porterlexander under the confederate who happened to be the assistant to meyer. right. because they were thn the united states army. he's the one who actually ends up beingbl to this the famous sialg system. and and here basically, do i ve laser thing here? i. rit. so,op okay. so you've got evans here you've got there's the vape farm. the's actually a signal station here, k and and porter alexander is actually at wilcox and signal wilcox's farm, which i think i's also now called signal. i think there's actually a park there now in northern virginia. you know, this is ironiclys if you've been there. it's al gigantic suburbia. right. but except for the that preserve part of of. but so would be actuay f this map here but porter alexander is basically stationed here on the hill. there's mcln. and fortunately for the confederates, where wherever owens is posted, the confederate brigade commander and this is

near the there is actually a signal station here. now, in e se of this battle, it does actually matter because if we go back to the title, right. this is when alexander looks out and he's able see the glint from the artillery and the barrels, the bayonets of the union troops. right. and he's able to send a message to shakes evans. look to your left you are turned he's able to warn by using this signaling system that the that the the the union it's basically attempting to try to it's attempting this flank and evans is able to then reposition his troops basically to to basically stall the union advance. and that obviously plays a big role in the eventual confederate victory. so this this is a great example of where the signaling system is actually an advantage. you know, it's it's about he's about eight miles away, right?

without a signaling system. how do you got information? well, you have to spend send a courier on a horse. right. and he's got to ride and maybe he gets lost and maybe he doesn't or maybe or maybe he gets disabled or shot or or maybe by the time gets there, the information is out of date. right? the information has been superseded by events and is part of the whole reason why meyer was trying to set up this stuff right now. obviously wigwam signaling right is prone to being disrupted by bad weather and stuff like that. so some of might ask, well, why not use electrical telegraph, right? you know, it's instantaneous. even faster, right? you don't to send it from signal station to signal station. right. but the problem, the telegraph is it requires a wire, right. and also you've got to have the various types of specialized equipment. right. and actually i have one. so this is the the beardsley

telegraph. and here is a this is the u.s. military. and we'll talk a little bit about if we have time, we'll talk about the bureaucratic issues that go into this up. the beardsley telegraph is interesting because you need electricity right so the beardsley thing like what do you do with early other systems as i understand don't completely understand the technical stuff but i think it's early batteries and that beardsley system has this crank and you can get the electrical juice you need for it from doing this crank. so don't need a battery. but that then runs into the problem that you'll see at chancellorsville where the signal then is not strong enough right. so the other problem, yes, you're going to have although this is the complete this is not the meyer tries to take control of these folks, but they he's not successful. you can build one. you have to build line so meyer does participate but there's an effort to build trains that are basically set up these telegraph lines. but they're vulnerable to being damaged. this we just that wonderful talk about soldiers misbehaving,

right? soldiers were like like just for fun messed up the wires and or out of curiosity and then and then and very well. there's all sorts of problems. and you see this especially in the battle chasers, where hooker does try to use it's a very dispersed battlefield also because it's fought the terrain in the wilderness and stuff like that. a lot of the wigwam signaling is also very difficult in that kind of terrain. and the short answer, it doesn't really work that well, because of all these limitations. right. so one, you've it's going to be hard to to get the wire that far forward. and even if you're able to get wire that far forward, it's to be potentially cut and unusable and things like that. right. so this this is part of the kind of the dilemma of this. the other thing i want to point out is, okay, so it's great. evans. evans gets this information, it's timely intelligence. 's what every battlefield commander wants. but one thing you should remember is that's t thenl

way he knows this. right. he also has done the old fashioned way of deploying ckets. right. and so that information, this corroborated by the fa tt there are se or schmuck out there sitting and, you know, and a picket post and he sees a bunch of yankees show up. right. and then he immediately alerts commanders. right. and so this take away the need to have multiple pieces of information. and the other is that having information in doesn't mean that you're going to act on it. all right. okay. evans the reason. evans is able to save the confederate left flank is because he doesn't just sit on it. he doesn't ask for clarification. he immediately starts moving his troops. also, before this battle, a demonstration by union forces here at stonebridge. fortunately for the confederates and unfortunately for the union forces, evans kind of withheld this fire and so because he's not doing a lot right the federals do not catch on to the fact that he's shifted such a large of his forces to cover his side flank.

and presumably, if they had known, you would have had a more vigorous federal advance. right, too. you know, i think, yeah, he's basically leaves, i think just one regiment here, maybe even less than that. right. so the technology is helpful. the technology is can be can be very useful, but doesn't take it doesn't the necessity being able to kind of engage in a lot of prompt, decisive action and. the fact of the matter is also that the technology and the kind of the fancy technology and all that is also sometimes still runs into these inherent limitations and things like that. right. and this is also related to the early attempts at ballooning an aerial reconnaissance. there's different figures in this. this is a this is by this is one of the balloons run by tsc, who is it's nd of another interesting gure he's bringing. 30 to. he is actually for a period of time.

he actually is actually the assistant of a traveling magician. and you might ask wh because for filling these balloons his his important innovations as i kind of sort of derstand it honestly is that he's able to fill these balloons up much quicker. and they're able to, because one of the problem is you'veot to fill the hot air balloon up and you've got to be able to do it properly and be up up in the air for a sufficient period of time. so one of the reasons he's able to do that is because, as a magician, these traveling magicians would actually go around in rural communities. they would do these basically chemistry experiments that looked cool, i guess. right. and and i guess they would make a little explosion and things like that. and so that that what that's actually got him interested in chemistry. he is part of kind of an early pre civil war ballooning movement that's both kind of in and out of the military. he actually attempts a he has hopes of doing transatlantic balloon flight and actually actually does a test run in 1861

between cincinnati tea. and he makes it to south carolina. right. and they you know, i think i forget one of his colleagues points out, like before, you cross the atlantic, maybe do it overland first and and so he and to prove that at you know he didn't fake this like this isn't some kind of hoax he actually brings with him like a cincinnati newspaper. right. so he lands in carolina from ohio right about the same time. i think it's like some terror cell, like the day before or something insane. and he also describes he shows and he says immediately both the white and black saw residents. they think he's some kind of demon. right they think he's some kind of supernatural apparition thing because they've never seen anything like this. and so so he persuades them that he's a human. right. okay i and and then and then

they discover his his cincinnati newspaper, you know, and then they and then and then he's sort of locked up and then it's sorted out. and i think they realize he's a mad scientist, really more. and he's able to he's able leave and depart and make it to washington, dc, where then he tries to pitch ballooning as a military tool, a device to kind of replicate the magic of the eye of sauron. right, to kind of make that a reality. right. and is it useful? yes. i mean, so this is an example, this is, you know, just a southern southern maryland, charles county. right. this is a sketch that's made from a balloon. i think i's a pennsylvania i think it's a train like a topographical engineer. he's not a regular, but he actually goes up to the balloon and and you're ae to dli spot confederate camps and things like that, right. but they're become various prle with the balloons, right. one is is that sometimes arms,

whether they are prey to the weather. so for example, in chancellorsville during jackson's flank. the balloons are not able to be up in the air because the winds are too high. also, there are issues with the angle also like how would you get the information from the balloon, right. so that when we when in the modern military when they talk about the kill chain so you have the sensor platform that sees something and then how do you then transmit it to someone who the thing that can take shot. right. and and can you do sufficiently fast. well, i mean, so one way is to to run a telegraph wire. right. but of course that then requires the balloon be fixed. one of one of those rival actually has an interesting proposal that doesn't work. and i'll explain why he actually says you should let the balloon free flight. right. so in order to get a better view of the enemy positions, you should actually cut the cable and and you might ask, well,

well, how are you going to get down? and down friendly territory? the theory is that basically, most of the time the wind is going east. so when when you need to then go back to union, you have the balloon go up. i mean, the wind at higher elevations, right. at higher altitudes. right. and then you'll be able to kind of make it back to center lines. but then but all the problems with this there. so i'll early in the war the union lines are always to the but that's not always going to be the case but then you still run into the problem of, okay, you've got this great information. because you don't have a wire. how is the person who has this great information still going to that word back to someone who would actually use it right. never mind the whole risking this of of floating over confederate positions and things like that. so that idea doesn't work right, but there are lots of sort of so a ballooning. and i also want to point out a lot of this people there are proposals to use ballooning during the seminole war and there are examples actually

during the french revolutionary war. so even even farther back. but in the american and the american case, things like the seminole war in florida, you know, a chronic of the us army is how do you find the seminoles and you to bring them to battle but you can never you don't know where they are because they're they're hiding the swamps of florida and. there are early proposals will send someone up on a balloon. right and in a lot of these kind of fail due to kind of there's all sorts of practical problems and things like that. and and that is part of the challenge, part of the problem is also that there are technical challenges or operational challenges. but there's also remember, you know, i'm really a historian of military institution that's, really kind of what i do. it's also, you know, it's also the army kind of struggles as to how to integrate these kinds of new ideas. and sometimes they're, for reasonable reasons. it's not always because a lot of times, i think in in in kind of american history as a whole,

there's kind of a retro not just with civil war that well, it's always these hidebound and there's truth to that. things like naval aviation's introduction to the us versus example in the interwar period is, kind of slow, right? it's kind of like what we're going to use planes to better correct artillery fire from battleships and it takes until pa hurlbert for someone to realize well maybe we drop bombs on them. that would be even better, right? it's the japanese who kind of do that with repeaters but and it true that that military organizations are a little c conservative, but a lot of times they are for for for reasonable reasons because they're conscious of problems with organizational structure, institutional structure and all the a lot of the pitfalls of of, for example, a lot of the concern about early telegraphs is vindicated. it's kind of like the frailty, the equipment, the difficulty in of actually deploying it in kind of really austere battlefield settings. these are all real problems. but but it is, you know, but there is an argument and there's some truth to it, though, that

although all that said ballooning could have been john young, it wasn't, it really posed chancellorsville it kind of vanishes, right? that the army, george mcclellan is actually a really in this way, a really forward thinking officer who really interested in new technology for a variety of reasons. i was, you know, talked about yesterday and ballooning as an example that and once he departs a lot the institutional sponsorship for some of these ideas and maybe they're probably inhibits their long term potential really do disappear but there's also lots of inherent problems with them right so and that's why i'm going to end with, you know, some of this stuff is, is. if you here this so iss the overland campaign thing. this is clark's mountain. you got ponyouain and stoney unin right. and ianto highlight here, but as here you see this an opening part. you see some of the new technology or the two techniques play a role, but you srto see how some old things still

really really matter. e old thing that really, really matters is you want to sit up on a high, high ground that letyo see. ght. and so so there's a famous there's a. how may 2nd, the's a famous command conference between lee and his senior generals. d they go up on clark's unin. and they can actually see all the federalam. right. and lee kind of has a sense of what what's wh's the coming spring know what's upcoming spring 64 campaign going to look at. right. and as you might expect, the confederates put a signal station here right. they put a signal station here and, lookouts, because. and when the campaign does kick off, they're going to they're going to send signals are going send word back to headquarters. right. and they're going to be using those wigwam signals and things like that. right now. but the union knows about this, too right? the union has put its own lookouts and signal stations and stoney and pony mountain. right. and one interesting thing is that the stoney mountain signal can see the clark mountain

signals and they've cracked the confederate right. they actually read the confederate signals right now from where my i've seen the secondary literature, which seems to be there is a cipher, there's a disk. it's like a two concentric wheels. and i guess how you turn the wheel, there's like a preset system for that. so the the wigwam signals do have a cipher on them by the way, if you're if you're my understanding is the i think the huntington still has the hunting out in southern california i'm from southern california actually. they have a bunch of still an encrypted union military telegram communications actually they actually have this digital research project where you go into a website, ordinary folks can signal and, you know, whoever wants to do it volunteers can help decode all this because it's very laborious. it's very time intensive. right. and they actually are trying to use these kinds of platforms to to do that. so, you know, a lot of this to this kind of early cryptography,

but the wig wax signaling also has a cryptography. now, the confederates obviously don't you know, so their stuff is their is cracked right. and so and the you know, also the the the armies know right about the importance of these signaling stations and their vulnerability. so so we've go back to the the the gettysburg campaign, right on little round hop. there's a signal station, right. and, you know, porter alexander who shows up again now, he's an artillery commander and he complains in his post war accounts of the battle, how much time is lost because of longstreet and him know he commands artillery forces. he commands the big bombardment. they lose time because they're trying to hide from the signal station. they're trying to evade that by the enemy. i right. it affects the campaign and things like that. and alexander also of complains that one of the advantages of the union position the so called

fishhook right is that you have interior lines but you also have these signal stations and good observation points so that meade is able to you know, he is able to get pretty timely intelligence hints and pretty good intelligence what exactly is happening. and that becomes a disadvantage for the confederates. right. and you see a version of this right. and by the way, also like the initial union movement, it's time to be done at night to be able to try to avoid the kind of being disturbed by the clark mountain. right. there's attempts kind of evade this right. but after the campaign kicks off, right, we call the battle of the wilderness, because it's fought in the wilderness. it's part in dense tree cover. it's fought in terrain where. visibility is inherently restricted. then you add smoke and the fire fires, right? then you add the condition of the roads right. there are moments where you're visibility and things like that

are, are, are, you know, the, you know, lot of times terrain, environmental conditions, the kind of the what coslovich, the famous prussian theorist, he called it friction. this idea that, you know, in war, everything's difficult it's difficult because things are violent, because people are. so there's less stress and they're scared. it's difficult because someone else is trying to kill you. right. that that, you know, introduces a lot of confusion in the system. everyone's adapting to each other. right. and that's going to mean that, you know, the your fancy technologic fix a lot of times becomes very not that really effective. right. and so by the way, this is a that's a view of clark mountain. i want to cover a nice little it's fuy cause i found an of clark mountain is almost here is looking the wrong direction so i ended up using one so if we come back to me it's kind of the modern case and let me read it and this whole issue of, you know, what is modern what is not

modern, what's magic and what's magic. let me read you a passage related to the american war. me in my state. this is from james rainey. he oh, gosh if you google his name and the battle of mosul for some reason i'm just blanking on what what the passage i'm reading is actually guarding article. so if you did that, you could find it pretty easily. but he described me written. i mean, i'll just read this passage. i'll explain. i, i would. so this is an american, not american. why not? he is. i'm sorry. our american reporter who's in who's embedded? iraqi military units. they're fighting the islamic state in mosul in 2070. okay. i would find out later that the strike request exchanges were taking place on a whatsapp channel. army's air forces, an infinity of munitions, and it was all being orchestrated by a free chat application. you download to your phone in 5 seconds. i didn't know whether to be amazed or appalled. i was amazed and appalled. it was farcical. it was in it was perhaps a

single tense example of a technologically current in the war. i could only think to call cult right. and once you started noticing of the cult, techno, techno wrinkles were everywhere. there was that magical gps mapping application that troops had on their phones like a self-aware cellular sand table. there were the videos of engagements uploaded and transferred instantaneously so that fighters on one front could get their l.o.l chills or shed their tears watching fighters and another. there were the privately recorded videos of executions and tortures shared the theater on whatsapp and signal and telegram uploaded by jihadists and soldiers alike, dwarfing a number and sometimes in horror. the official videos the al-hayat media center put out how hard media was. what's the islamic state's official media ordered their press service, so to speak. right. and so what he's describing is that what would happen in iraq was was u.s. forces not provided iraqi military officers with ipads not reportable. it's and basically they would have been able to get a grid. so if they had trouble with that

same machine gun position, they would then beat depending on the chain. they would then eventually be contact. sometimes it would be through an american air air controller who was actually in mosul, you know, people were there kind of secretly and then they would actually use they would then they eventually they would interface with the official american military and, you know, communications networks. right. and then the airstrike would drop right. but before you got to that, it was literally over whatsapp. right? right. so so you'd have this kind of use of cell phone technology basically. right. and, you know, and from his perspective, it is kind of like a black magic, right? it's sort of it's sort of absurd. right. you've got the americans won't talk to them because are delta people who are who are not supposed to be there when. you are, you know, and you've got the army officer went to ranger school and speaks like a weirdly american english. right. and you've got this whole complicated thing. and the grunts who were actually doing the fighting, the counterterrorism service and

then know and they're using this kind of ridiculous media platforms. and the next thing you know, there's a direct attack machine dropped like a machine straight. so it seems like magic. it seems like, you know, it's like something out of a fantasy. right. but he also points out, though, that a lot of times the way this is sold is that while these strikes really precise, they're really surgical civilians never get killed or very rarely get killed. and he's like, and if you're very you, though, he knows that's not true. that's he knows that it's a guy it's some is a guy in a humvee who just got shot up and who's sending this mission on whatsapp like how precise can this really be and, you know, i deliberately picked this. if you go to very dark corners of the internet in places like telegram, it's filled with footage of people gettg lled and blown up. and it's all very graphic and it's all very eerining, i'm sorry to say, do all sorts of people, but, you know, this is, you know, there's a is there somethinnehere? there something that seems almost mystical and supernatural?

yes. is there also but one they don't necessarily lir the kind of decisive effects. right. islamic state just claimed to attack russia. they're not really completely gone. right. all the american technology didn't do over here in afghanistan. right. so, you know, the last american drone strike in, afghanistan, before the kind of botched was was that was it was a mistaken you know, they they blew up a civilian car, you know, intending to, you know, a lot of things don't work out as well. right. that a lot of it is at the end of the day, people are people, right? and things are messy. right. and military operations operate in this messy space and different military adversaries also react and adapt to another. so the dream of of being able to kind of decisively overcome your opponent through a technological, gee whiz fix just isn't just a lot of times isn't true. right. and that's of and i think the civil war kind of has premonitions about premonitions

of both real technological change, right. especially in things like logistics. right. that's really i would argue that's really where the technology really about railroads and projection of military forces on kind of your senses. right. but there are also lots of things where it doesn't work. it's very much oversold by the kind of the technology pioneers. and that's going to be kind of a systemic issue that into the future. right. okay. yes, sir. yes, sir. john clark, salt wheel, virginia, how were the balloons, guys? for lack of a better word to give them aloft lighter than their was it by hydrogen and that was and you generating leaks close of it and was hard for years early 20th century and it was hard to generate my understanding is an expensive

and that's these are parts of the practical problems with you know one of the reasons that balloon caught gets the ground is because mcallen is able to kind of willing to invest and this there's a lot of skepticism about it in the army. right. but and my understanding it's hydrogen and they've got some kind of chemical process generate it. but like i think there's one point where they sometimes run out right. and you know what analogy i may give is, you know, the modern battlefield has so many electronics, but one of the things is where do you get your batteries? like, okay, so your your, you know, your your your gps tracker is only useful if you can charge it. well, that might not be so easy in all sorts of circumstances. yes, sir. thank you for the talk. it was very enlightening and i also want to thank you for your book, the military justice of war used it for my students as required. reading it proved very fruitful.

did the union or did the confederacy ever catch on that the union had broken their code? and if so, did the confederacy ever use the signal flags to spread or misinformation? that's a good i'm not. i'm not sure my suspicion is i don't know. jack. you know, maybe at this they'll be talking about it tomorrow. okay. okay. we'll to vote. i don't want to get so i. okay, that's great. perfect. because i don't know offhand, you know, the union generals are reluctant to use it because even though it is a crack they suspect it is right. but i'll also say that even even if there is knowledge that it's crack, there's kind of a balance. like, for example, if look at operations, american operations, afghanistan had like u.s. forces were listing on the taliban's conversations because they were unencrypted walkie talkies. they knew it, but they still

used it because you still had to have to have some way of transmitting information. but what they said over the walkie talkie was probably going to be done that. and in the case of something like clark mountain, it's kind of like, well, you got to you got to say that somehow, you know, yankees are crossing the river right. so that's that would be that's my bet. but you hold off for tomorrow that so you're going to have a better knowledgeable answer to. yes, sir. not a question, but just to ironically just read an article in magazine where the author attributes to consider excess in shenandoah valley to the fact that they can control massive rocky mountain and they're able to see union troops, which throughout the course of the war. and they single knob and they can talk to other forces this is where they are and i just it's really true. yeah it's why preparing this talk i didn't i first i didn't

look into that as much but yeah this issue of of being able to having the advantage of of people. right that's it's it's really important for commanders. right. by the way, also remember, it's a it's a tell us, you know, they're going to be using like optics and telescopes and things like that. right. and so that that thing allows you to extend the range and things that but the signals is important because how do you get the information, someone who can use it right. so. also good maps, right? so if there's a whole constellation of things that goes into this. you know, the important jedidiah hotchkiss maps with jackson having a sense of how long it took and be able to predict that effectively. right for all that a lot of times for technologies to work there has to be a whole system that kind of integrates it and. otherwise it doesn't it doesn't actually it isn't actually as useful potentially as it might

be. thank you. was there any formal agency like today's darpa where the technology being worked on and enhanced and developed that? a very question. the short answer is, is no. but what see is a lot of these these inventors are great entrepreneurs and the nature of the 19th century state is is that the civil war america is you can show up at the war department to pitch your idea relatively easily. right. and and that's just because it's a smaller country it's a smaller world. i'm sorry. i used to. jenny kiesling, who teaches at a web point. she used to to fend off crazy letters from weird people who want to tell her about his great ideas for tank tactics and was sending it to the west point history department for mysterious reasons. right. but but if you know and if and so you know you might need like

meyer a foot in the bureaucracy because he's a surgeon but he but that's actually enough that he's able to go talk to, you know, relatively senior people and say, hey, i've got this great idea without them saying, well this is insane. obviously modern world, that just doesn't work anymore. things are so complicated. things are so institutionalized. but that's why you have an agency like darpa. so that's the that's like that's like the the department of defense mad scientist ration described that way. but but like a lot of these surveillance are pioneered by them with the assault breaker programs. this is like a late seventies, early eighties. right. it's kind of deep strike and kind of what goes into airline battle, but it's it's it's kind of a and then they'll they will at times they fund research. i actually met guy who was like a big drone expert. he refuses to take money for them, but he acknowledged because he thinks the drone stuff is kind of in the world. but but he was probably the best he speaks is probably the best run research organization in the world, but they're just using their powers for illing his view of that. but yeah that there isn't and so

you know not just the. there's a lot of civilian you know the telegraph the telegraph outfit it's mostly civilians, right? meyer there's a fight meyer wants to control electronic signal only too. and he fails. he does. he's he isn't able to deal, partly because these guys are actually probably too good at what they're doing right. and the railroad management. yes, they're some army hermann. how there's there's especially in more kind of overtly military settings like you're repairing railroads that were destroyed like during their line of campaigning. but there's a huge amount of civilian expertise that's imported into kind of the railroad effort. right. and there's kind of a lot of successful civil military, you know. and there's lots of different examples of this, whether it's ordnance or gunner or the creation of iron and, things like that in the modern right. so you don't need a da put in this world, but in a lot of ways. but if you're an inventor in a way, you can kind of do it yourself right.

was there ever any investigation of the use of mirrors and light to transmit signals or information when there are torches is there there's fire things, but not that's actually that's as far as i know. no. and i'm kind of curious as to why not. i wonder if it was my suspicion is is part of the issue with signaling is that the equipment needs to be really durable. right so and so women do mexico is the first trial of this and you're you're out on the frontier or in the desert and things like that. and my suspicion is that any kind of optical thing like that would kind of also, i assume the angling would be more complicated potentially you'd have to the right angle in relation to the sun. right. and if you didn't want to be connected to that thing, you would you know, you'd have to

use something like a flag instead. of. all right. okay. thank you. all right. yeah, that's. all right. i want to thank both this speakers for sharing their expertise. really interesting aspects, different kinds of information, different technologies, different methods of exchanging data. so we're off to a great start for the now we have a break. 1130. so we'll get to enjoy some coffee and pastries are the refreshment it's outside and i do want to take a moment to give a round of applause to the donuts who kindly funded this morning break.

i want to reflect for just a moment on who was. who is this person we're