There ' s a theorist and former USAF spec ops intel planner named John Robb that has done a lot of thinking about this . According to him and other formularies of the idea called 4 th Generation War like Bill Lind etc , the wars of the future are increasingly going to be waged by states and their substate allies against a bazaar of non and substate entities which will use almost entrepreneurial strategies to rapidly find and exploit the weaknesses in the slower reacting state ' s strategies and systems . Robb ' s book Brave New War is an interesting case study of his ideas in the real world of the Iraq War , South and Central American cartels , global hacking and international finance flows . There ' s also Ghost Fleet by P . W . Singer , which deals with the same ideas in the fictional scenario of a hot war between the US and China . Overall , I think that war between states is waning but that war between and against nonstate groups will only continue to increase , and that this will not be as easy for States to win as might be assumed due to Open Source Warfare , the ability of multiple subgroups to form ersatz coalitions fluidly and rapidly and exploit the known and soon to be found weaknesses of hierarchy bound status quo forces faster than those forces can react , and thus force state units into long term strategic situations that they cannot secure victory in .