At the Marne and the Somme a century ago, great armies massed along terrible trench lines. French, British, German and Austrian troops hurled themselves against each other in infantry assaults outdated by the modernization of weaponry. The tactics used were from the 19th century, and the age of Napoleon; the weapons were from the 20th Century, and the age of industrialization. The result was mass slaughter.

At the outbreak of World War II, polish cavalry valiantly charged approaching German Panzer Tanks to no avail, and the Nazi Blitzkrieg quickly outflanked the fortifications of the Maginot line in France. Again, a new war began with the losing belligerents employing the tactics and weaponry of the last war.

Decades later, as American forces became engaged in jungle combat in Vietnam, U.S. forces learned the hard way that older tactics were of little use in a new kind of guerilla war.

Time and time again, great powers throughout history have made the mistake of beginning a new conflict with the weaponry, and the tactics, of the last war only to find that the nature of warfare itself had changed.

Our community, out of a strong sense of economic necessity, has largely cheered the news that job growth will improve in eastern Connecticut as we embark on a massive submarine building program. The United States will be going into debt to construct the largest ballistic missile submarines our nation ever built. Set to sail to the end of the century, these submarines will carry in their hulls the blast power of almost a million Hiroshimas in each boat. These super subs, the largest and most powerful weapons of mass destruction ever built by man, contain the awesome power to bring the heat of the surface of the sun upon the surface of the Earth.

While as impressive to the military minded that may sound, and as terrifying to those who long for a more peaceful world, ballistic missile submarines are, in many ways, relics of the last war, and very expensive ones at that. Ballistic missile submarines exist to provide a strategic deterrent against a nuclear launch by a rival power, such as Russia. Their use in strategic national defense was developed during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a war that ended over a quarter century ago.

New Russian threats, however, are clearly at our door. U.S. Intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russian Intelligence meddled in our election in 2016 and are planning to do so again in 2018. In a recent interview with Russian media, Russian President Putin stated that the nation that controlled the development of Artificial Intelligence would control the coming century.

The new war has already begun.

21st century conflict will be currency wars, computer wars, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Why, after all, would a nation spend trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons when a rival power’s democracy can be undermined with a few cheap Facebook ads?

What good are nuclear weapons if A.I. programs could compromise our launch systems, or crash our entire defense network? Our great nuclear weapons may be as useful against a cyber blitzkrieg as the fixed fortifications of the Maginot line were against the 1940 Nazi assault.

There is little doubt American workers need jobs, but we should be able to ask of our government: is there no other way to provide work to those who seek it?

Conflicts between great powers may be a sad reality of human existence, but if one lesson can be gained by history it is this: If you fight the new war with the weapons and tactics of the last war, you are doomed to failure.

America needs a defense strategy, and an economy, for the 21st century. We need to think differently. We need to stop fighting the last war.

Daryl Justin Finizio is an attorney and a former mayor of New London, where he lives.