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FTR#1219 and FTR#1220 War Games, Part 1 and War Games, Part 2

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­­­FTR#1219 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

­­­FTR#1220 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: In these pro­grams, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Com­plex: How the Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives.

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine how the mil­i­tary exerts dom­i­nant influ­ence over our enter­tain­ment activ­i­ties and how that, in turn, both affects and bol­sters the Pen­ta­gon.

We begin by “going to the movies.”

The syn­the­sis of Hol­ly­wood and “The Com­plex” is sum­ma­rized by Nick Turse in the pas­sage below. It should be not­ed that the meld­ing of Hol­ly­wood and the mil­i­tary is a foun­da­tion of the deriv­a­tive syn­the­sis of the mil­i­tary and the video-gam­ing industry–the focus of the bulk of these pro­grams.

“. . . .  As David Robb, the author of Oper­a­tion Hol­ly­wood: How the Pen­ta­gon Shapes and Cen­sors the Movies, observed: ‘Hol­ly­wood and the Pen­ta­gon have a col­lab­o­ra­tion that works well for both sides. Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers get what they want—access to bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of mil­i­tary hard­ware and equipment—tanks, jet fight­ers, nuclear sub­marines and air­craft carriers—and the mil­i­tary gets what it wants—films that por­tray the mil­i­tary in a pos­i­tive light; films that help the ser­vices in their recruit­ing efforts.’. . .”

Indeed, the very gen­e­sis of video games in deriv­a­tive of the defense indus­try: ” . . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engi­neer work­ing for defense con­trac­tor Loral Elec­tron­ics (today part of Lock­heed Mar­tin) on ‘com­put­er com­po­nents for Navy RADAR sys­tems,’ dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed ‘inter­ac­tive TV-based enter­tain­ment.’. . . .”

The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming indus­try syn­the­sis is epit­o­mized by the Insti­tute of Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies:

” . . . . The answer lies in Mari­na Del Rey, Cal­i­for­nia, at the Insti­tute for Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies (ICT), a cen­ter with­in the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (USC) sys­tem. There, in 1999, the military’s grow­ing obses­sion with video games moved to a new lev­el when Sec­re­tary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-mil­lion con­tract with USC to cre­ate ICT, says the center’s Web site, ‘to build a part­ner­ship among the enter­tain­ment indus­try, army and acad­e­mia with the goal of cre­at­ing syn­thet­ic expe­ri­ences so com­pelling that par­tic­i­pants react as if they are real.’. . .”

The video game/Pentagon rela­tion­ship has evolved into a fusion of the two: “. . . . The rest fol­lowed, lead­ing to the cur­rent con­tin­u­ous mil­i­tary gaming/simulation loop where com­mer­cial video games are adopt­ed as mil­i­tary train­ing aids and mil­i­tary sim­u­la­tors are reengi­neered into civil­ian gam­ing mon­ey mak­ers in all sorts of strange and con­fus­ing ways. . . .”

Author Turse looked ahead (in 2008) and fore­saw a future that, to a dis­turb­ing extent, has become real­i­ty: ” . . . . Cer­tain­ly, the day is not far off when most poten­tial U.S. troops will have grown up play­ing com­mer­cial video games that were cre­at­ed by the mil­i­tary as train­ing sim­u­la­tors; will be recruit­ed, at least in part, through video games; will be test­ed, post-enlist­ment, on advanced video game sys­tems; will be trained using sim­u­la­tors, which will lat­er be turned into video games, or on recon­fig­ured ver­sions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehi­cles using devices resem­bling com­mer­cial video game con­trollers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gam­ing head back to their quar­ters to kick back and play the lat­est PlaySta­tion or Xbox games cre­at­ed with or spon­sored by their own, or anoth­er, branch of the armed forces. . . .”

1. The syn­the­sis of Hol­ly­wood and “The Com­plex” is sum­ma­rized by Nick Turse in the pas­sage below. It should be not­ed that the meld­ing of Hol­ly­wood and the mil­i­tary is a foun­da­tion of the deriv­a­tive syn­the­sis of the mil­i­tary and the video-gam­ing industry–the focus of the bulk of these pro­grams.

The Com­plex: How The Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives by Nick Turse; Pic­a­dor [SC] Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books [Hen­ry Holt & Com­pa­ny]; Copy­right 2008 by Nick Turse; ISBN 978–0‑8050–8919‑6; pp. 111–112. 

. . . . As David Robb, the author of Oper­a­tion Hol­ly­wood: How the Pen­ta­gon Shapes and Cen­sors the Movies, observed: “Hol­ly­wood and the Pen­ta­gon have a col­lab­o­ra­tion that works well for both sides. Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers get what they want—access to bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of mil­i­tary hard­ware and equipment—tanks, jet fight­ers, nuclear sub­marines and air­craft carriers—and the mil­i­tary gets what it wants—films that por­tray the mil­i­tary in a pos­i­tive light; films that help the ser­vices in their recruit­ing efforts.”

But recruit­ing is just part of the equa­tion, and the phrase, “a pos­i­tive light” is even a lit­tle soft. At the movies, the mil­i­tary gets sold as hero­ic, admirable, and moral­ly cor­rect. Often it can lit­er­al­ly do no wrong.

Speak­ing about the big-bud­get, live-action block­buster Trans­form­ers (2007) Ian Bryce, one of the pro­duc­ers, char­ac­ter­ized the rela­tion­ship this way, “With­out the superb mil­i­tary sup­port we’ve got­ten . . . . it would be an entire­ly dif­fer­ent-look­ing film . . . Once you get Pen­ta­gon approval, you’ve cre­at­ed a win-win sit­u­a­tion.  We want to coop­er­ate with the Pen­ta­gon to show the off in the most pos­i­tive light, and the Pen­ta­gon like­wise wants to give us the resources to be able to do that.” On the mil­i­tary side, air force mas­ter sergeant Lar­ry Belen spoke of sim­i­lar moti­va­tions for aid­ing the pro­duc­tion of Iron Man: “I want peo­ple to walk away from this movie with a real­ly good impres­sion of the Air Force, like they got about the Navy see­ing Top Gun,” he said. But air force cap­tain Chris­t­ian Hodge, the Defense Department’s project offi­cer for Iron Man, may have said it best when he unabashed­ly opined, “The Air Force is going to come off look­ing like rock stars.” . . . .

2. Indeed, the very gen­e­sis of video games in deriv­a­tive of the defense indus­try:

The Com­plex: How The Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives by Nick Turse; Pic­a­dor [SC] Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books [Hen­ry Holt & Com­pa­ny]; Copy­right 2008 by Nick Turse; ISBN 978–0‑8050–8919‑6; p. 126. 

. . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engi­neer work­ing for defense con­trac­tor Loral Elec­tron­ics (today part of Lock­heed Mar­tin) on “com­put­er com­po­nents for Navy RADAR sys­tems,” dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed “inter­ac­tive TV-based enter­tain­ment.”. . . .

3. The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming indus­try syn­the­sis is epit­o­mized by the Insti­tute of Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies:

The Com­plex: How The Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives by Nick Turse; Pic­a­dor [SC] Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books [Hen­ry Holt & Com­pa­ny]; Copy­right 2008 by Nick Turse; ISBN 978–0‑8050–8919‑6; pp. 119–120. 

. . . . The answer lies in Mari­na Del Rey, Cal­i­for­nia, at the Insti­tute for Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies (ICT), a cen­ter with­in the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (USC) sys­tem. There, in 1999, the military’s grow­ing obses­sion with video games moved to a new lev­el when Sec­re­tary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-mil­lion con­tract with USC to cre­ate ICT, says the center’s Web site, “to build a part­ner­ship among the enter­tain­ment indus­try, army and acad­e­mia with the goal of cre­at­ing syn­thet­ic expe­ri­ences so com­pelling that par­tic­i­pants react as if they are real.”

To accom­plish their gam­ing goals, ICT assem­bled a team fit for the task, includ­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor David Wertheimer, for­mer­ly the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Para­mount Tele­vi­sion Group (where he estab­lished Para­mount Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment, the studio’s Inter­net tech­nol­o­gy group);  Cre­ative Direc­tor James Kor­ris (also the exec­u­tive direc­tor of USC’s Enter­tain­ment Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter), a vet­er­an tele­vi­sion writer; and Cathy Komi­nos, for­mer­ly the deputy direc­tor of research at the Pen­ta­gon, where she over­saw the Army Basic Research Pro­gram, Sim­u­la­tion, Train­ing and Instru­men­ta­tion Com­mand, and Army High Per­for­mance Com­put­ing pro­grams. . . .

4. The Pentagon/video game syn­the­sis is sum­ma­rized yet again in the fol­low­ing brief pas­sage.

The Com­plex: How The Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives by Nick Turse; Pic­a­dor [SC] Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books [Hen­ry Holt & Com­pa­ny]; Copy­right 2008 by Nick Turse; ISBN 978–0‑8050–8919‑6; p. 134.

. . . . The rest fol­lowed, lead­ing to the cur­rent con­tin­u­ous mil­i­tary gaming/simulation loop where com­mer­cial video games are adopt­ed as mil­i­tary train­ing aids and mil­i­tary sim­u­la­tors are reengi­neered into civil­ian gam­ing mon­ey mak­ers in all sorts of strange and con­fus­ing ways. . . .

5. A longer pas­sage ana­lyzes the essence of the video game/military rela­tion­ship for our soci­ety, today and in the future.

The Com­plex: How The Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives by Nick Turse; Pic­a­dor [SC] Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books [Hen­ry Holt & Com­pa­ny]; Copy­right 2008 by Nick Turse; ISBN 978–0‑8050–8919‑6; pp. 139–140. 

. . . . Today, the mil­i­tary, toy, and gam­ing worlds are com­plete­ly entan­gled, and the future promis­es only more inter­pen­e­tra­tions and com­plex col­lab­o­ra­tions that would have made Dwight Eisenhower’s head spin. . . .

. . . . Cer­tain­ly, the day is not far off when most poten­tial U.S. troops will have grown up play­ing com­mer­cial video games that were cre­at­ed by the mil­i­tary as train­ing sim­u­la­tors; will be recruit­ed, at least in part, through video games; will be test­ed, post-enlist­ment, on advanced video game sys­tems; will be trained using sim­u­la­tors, which will lat­er be turned into video games, or on recon­fig­ured ver­sions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehi­cles using devices resem­bling com­mer­cial video game con­trollers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gam­ing head back to their quar­ters to kick back and play the lat­est PlaySta­tion or Xbox games cre­at­ed with or spon­sored by their own, or anoth­er, branch of the armed forces.

More and more toys are now poised to become clan­des­tine com­bat teach­ing tools, and more and more sim­u­la­tors are des­tined to be tomorrow’s toys. And what of America’s chil­dren and young adults in all this? How will they be affect­ed by the daz­zling set of mil­i­tary train­ing devices now land­ing in their liv­ing rooms and on their PCs, pro­duced by video game giants under the  watch­ful eyes of the Pen­ta­gon? After all, what these games offer is less a mat­ter of sim­ple mil­i­tary indoc­tri­na­tion and more like a near immer­sion in a vir­tu­al world of war, where armed con­flict is not the last, but the first—and indeed the only—resort. . . .

Discussion

One comment for “FTR#1219 and FTR#1220 War Games, Part 1 and War Games, Part 2”

  1. In my view, this could well be one of the most impor­tant top­ics fac­ing our soci­ety today.

    The enter­tain­ment indus­try’s role as state pro­pa­gan­dists is well-doc­u­ment­ed at the web­site spyculture.com, which has been using FOIA requests to unveil just how much the Depart­ment Of Defense has been alter­ing movie and TV scripts for decades.

    Just about every film with a mil­i­tary theme or sub-plot, even seem­ing­ly innocu­ous films like ‘Pitch Per­fect 3’, enjoy Pen­ta­gon-lev­el re-writes before final release. Once you see this rot­ten influ­ence of the MIC, you just can­not un-see it.

    Posted by Hugh Sharpe | January 3, 2022, 9:40 am

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