Governments Are Using Science Fiction to Predict Potential Threats
drones being used in the war in Ukraine.
But, of course, science fiction has long predicted this type of warfare and if anything, it is simply a logical continuation of the computerization of daily life.
In Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game (1985), the child protagonist Ender Wiggin is taken into Battle School where he takes part in a series of elaborate military exercises using computers to simulate a war against a distant alien foe. Only after destroying the alien home world does Ender then discover that he wasn’t playing a game at all, but rather commanding real-world forces fighting in outer space.
In a recent article, I argue that Ender’s Game both pre-empts and engages with many of the key debates that we are having in this area today. This includes the way targets are selected and the moral and ethical questions around remote killing. As drones become more common in daily civilian life, these issues will only become more pressing.
3. Bio-engineering
Beyond drones and advanced computer technologies, we might also consider the biological sciences and the role of animals used to support humanitarian operations in war.
In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War (2017), the protagonist is a bio-engineered dog – quite literally, a dog-of-war (a mercenary) – who follows orders without question until one day discovering that his masters aren’t quite the “good guys” they first claim.
As with so many of the best works of science fiction, Dogs of War poses many ethical and moral questions about the human condition, including the way humans so often exploit others, and how animals then fit within our moral framework.
For example, the real-world case of the dog Kuno who saved soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan and was awarded the dog equivalent of the Victoria Cross. If we are to send out animals into dangerous situations to support soldiers or search for earthquake survivors then perhaps the animals too need to be augmented to reduce risks and make them better at what they do?
4. Behavioral Modification
Science fiction has a lot to say about drugs and the way chemicals can be used to distort reality and modify behavior. Perhaps the most famous author in this area is Philip K. Dick, with novels such as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964), Ubik (1969) and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) dealing with variations on this theme.
There was also the film Serenity (2005) (and its sorely missed TV series, Firefly), in which Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew travel to the planet Miranda to discover the dark consequences of drugs used to control populations and make people more compliant.
While these examples may seem sinister, they are nothing compared with the experiments conducted by the real-life CIA.
Towards the end of the Vietnam war, revelations emerged that the CIA had been conducting illegal human experiments in order to develop drugs for brainwashing and torture. This operation, known as MK-ULTRA, was made public at a senate hearing in 1977.
While we can only hope that such extreme and horrific experiments are a thing of the past, the concept of behavioral modification is still a big thing in defense research, though perhaps not to the same extent as it was in the middle of the last century.
Indeed, many would argue that social media is now a global battlefield, with information warfare a real threat to security, and the likes of Russia and China accused of waging cyber campaigns against the west.
Mike Ryder is Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
