The Weaponisation of Everything
A Field Guide the New Way of War
Mark Galeotti, Yale University Press, 2022, 248 pages
Book Review published on: May 20, 2025
In The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide the New Way of War, author Mark Galeotti brilliantly explains that pretty much everything can and has been weaponized in the modern age. The author describes his work as a field guide to the new way of war. The book is fast paced. It is also balanced with facts, analysis, and real-world examples. The author utilizes his experience as a recognized expert on transnational crime and Russian security affairs to add depth and credibility to his work.
The book begins by exerting that traditional conflict has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home (even in authoritarian regimes), and too difficult to manage. Since the end of the Cold War, interstate wars have remained rare. The new form of warfare is a kind of war of all against all. It differs in intensity and form but at its most extreme form, the new way of war is one of constant competition where all states vie against each other without hope of an end.
The author identifies modern warfare as espionage, subversion, and crime. Nations and alliances weaponize foreign aid, development, and essential services. Nations enforce economic sanctions and embargos to force their will against competitors, and international law is weaponized to rewrite national international borders and trade laws. Galeotti identifies economic guerrilla warfare as the use of cyberattacks and currency manipulation that floods a country with counterfeit money and other covert tactics. When kinetic tactics are needed, nations are replacing traditional military operations with mercenaries and guns for hire to achieve objectives while maintaining deniability.
One of the more interesting sections of the book was on the weaponization of information. In light of the internet, we are all now bombarded with information, disinformation, misinformation, and infotainment. As of 2019, 57 percent of the global population utilize the internet as a news source and 42 percent of the population regularly participate in social media. This has made it ridiculously easy not just for states but for individuals to fake news, manipulate videos, and simply lie. Galeotti describes a study conducted by the Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which found that "it took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people and that disinformation was 70 percent more likely to be shared than real news." He references a 2017 article titled "The Gerasimov Doctrine," in which Russian General Valery Gerasimov states that "the role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness." It says something when a former tank commander suggests that information operations may be more powerful than his armor.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is strategically inclined or who desires to understand the nature of modern warfare. Considering today's global events, Galeotti's work should be required reading.
Book Review written by: Lt. Col. Robert B. Haines, U.S. Army, Retired, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas