August 21, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ • McDialogues™
Understanding the Grammars of Electric Culture and Propaganda Science™
An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™ and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science™
by Nelson S. Thall
Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca. and McLuhan Media Scientist, Former President/Director, Marshall McLuhan Centre On Global Communications, Toronto, Canada.
THE BATTLEFIELD HAS NO BORDER
In Electric War, Every Nervous System Is Within Range.
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, when I follow the wars involving Iran and Ukraine, I see missiles, drones, interceptors and satellites, and that is what I always understood a war to be. But I have never been to either country and I am nowhere near any battlefield, yet somehow these wars keep entering my day and even my arguments with friends. When we use the word weapon today, are we still talking mainly about something that explodes?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
No. The explosive weapon is only the most visible figure against a much larger ground. McLuhan understood that weapons are extensions of our anatomy and that, with electricity, warfare moves increasingly into information and images, a “war of the icons.” Once technology extends the central nervous system, the missile, drone, satellite, sensor, computer, factory, supply chain and interceptor become parts of one electric field. The Iran and Ukraine wars demonstrate it. Ukraine's defense against Russian ballistic missiles is constrained by shortages of Patriot interceptors, while the Iran conflict also draws upon American air-defense stocks. A weapon consumed in one theater can therefore change the balance of life and death in another without ever traveling there. At the same time, the software war enters the nervous system through the phone. Images, slogans, short videos, fabricated pictures and emotional narratives can alter the environment in which people decide what is real. The missile crosses geographical space to reach its target. Propaganda reaches the target at the speed of light. A person sitting in America can therefore be brought psychologically inside a foreign war without a soldier, missile or drone ever crossing the ocean.
That is why the battlefield of electric war is wherever the human nervous system can be reached. Hardware attacks bodies, cities and industrial systems; software attacks perception, identity, social cohesion and the common picture of reality. The drone strike becomes the video, the video becomes propaganda, the propaganda alters political pressure, political pressure affects the manufacture and distribution of weapons, and the weapons return to the battlefield as hardware. The circle closes. McLuhan saw the reversal: electric weaponry makes the unity of mankind impossible to escape because the effects of war can no longer be contained within the geography where the shooting occurs. In electric war, the weapon is no longer merely what strikes the enemy. The weapon is the entire technological environment that reaches him, surrounds him, informs him and reorganizes the reality in which he acts.
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Sources: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, “Weapons,” pp. 294–300. Associated Press reporting on Ukraine's Patriot shortage and U.S. munitions depletion during the Iran conflict, August 2026. Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, “Explosive Media: Iranian state-linked AI Lego-style videos claiming that Tehran has ‘won the propaganda war,’” July 2026.
All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence, aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM), was not employed. We hired a stenographer. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com