Mr. Bush can easily explain what that means in military terms: "It's a war that matches high-technology weapons with people on horseback," he said today.
Speaking at the opening of China's annual session of parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said the government would "strengthen research on national defence and the development of new- and high-technology weapons and equipment" and "enhance border, coastal and air defences".
The Bush administration's military buildup to fight Al Qaeda and possibly Saddam Hussein has piqued public interest in new high-technology weapons -- hardware with names like Bird of Prey, Super Hornet, Predator and Javelin.
A Pentagon official said at the time that the team monitoring the images relayed back by the drone, one of the C.I.A.'s latest high-technology weapons, spotted a tall man and thought he might be a top leader of Al Qaeda.
He also emphasized the patient, "precise" use of American high-technology weapons systems like fast, low-flying attack helicopters with advanced night optics and fixed-wing attack aircraft firing satellite-guided bombs and missiles, used in Baghdad in the last 10 days for the first time since American troops captured the city in April.
The rapid obsolescence of the electromechanical computer had everything to do with World War II, which provided, in computing as in so many other fields, unprecedented sums of money from America's military establishment for high-technology weapons and tools of war, such as machines to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells.
Much like militaries that use small strike forces equipped with high-technology weapons to knock out larger, less sophisticated enemies, police are turning to the keyboard over shoe leather to nab suspects.
The massive downsizing of long-range defense spending plans will also force the Pentagon to make difficult choices between moving ahead with new, high-technology weapon programs or upgrading existing systems.
The bulk of the world's defense spending is accounted for by the high-income economies (the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union), primarily because of the cost of high-technology weapon systems.
Furthermore, the expense and high technology of nuclear weapons suddenly created two classes of powers in the world: those who wielded these new tools of war and those who did not.
