Our Tax Dollars at Work
Wired is reporting that a professor at the National Defense University (am I the only one who didn’t know there even was a National Defense University?) gave a presentation on virtual worlds which included a fictional scenario of how terrorists might use the raid lingo of World of Warcraft to disguise a plot to blow up the White House.
I am nearly baffled beyond words.
Who in their RIGHT FRAKKING MIND would assume that terrorists would go to the trouble of disguising their work in some elaborate code within WoW’s chat system when they have things like–oh, I don’t know–cellular phones and text messages? What moron would think that fighting NPCs in a DIKU game is *ANYTHING* like blowing up people in real life? How detached from reality would you even have to be to consider this even remotely likely?
Okay, I’ll grant you that if, while nosing around in Second Life, you notice that someone has built a scale replica of Washington and is testing ways to blow it up, it’s worth looking into. But I can guarantee you that Osama Bin Laden has not avoided capture because he’s in his mom’s basement farming boar skins in Hellfire. I’m shocked that there isn’t a slide in this presentation insisting that Chinese gold farmers are just a cover for military strategists plotting a full-scale invasion of the US.
The best part is that WE PAID FOR THIS. With actual tax dollars. If I can find any upside, it’s that it may be possible to write off my WoW subscription by noting on my tax return that it’s being used in the War on Terror.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to monitoring the trade channel in Ogrimmar. WE CAN’T LET THE TERRORISTS WIN!
That. Is. Sad.
Ali Akbar doesn’t care about some MMO fantasy world. Hell, they have enough problems with getting people and resources here. I would be more concerned with them manipulating American lives. “The Terrorist Without a Face.”
Even IF they trained online, it wouldn’t be anywhere near what they’d face in a realistic scenario. That’s like Jack Thompson arguing that FPS game, like Doom, actually train people how to accurately shoot a weapon. Uh, ok. Someone grab the dummy stick.
Actually…while it sounds somewhat far-fetched, I think what that guy was getting at is that is that modern warfare includes pop culture elements that might provide useful plan concealment opportunities. If you speak in what will pass as “the In lingo” to most unfamiliar ears it will still sound like gibberish and go undetected.
Kind of like in WWII when the French Resistance would broadcast what sounded like weather or farm-related statements that were really code speak for their operations. “Who *cares* how many cows are in the back 40 at midnight!?” said some later unemployed German broadcast analyst .
[...] posted a bit of outrage at the idea that our tax dollars were used to investigate the possibility of terrorists using [...]
“I got into this uber raiding guild only to find out that I had been recruited by Al Qaeda. Oh well, as long as they gear up my warrior…”
Yeah I know about WWII broadcasts and such, but this is a different era. Back then there were only so many ways to communicate incognito, and now there are virtually limitless ways.
The first few slides of the presentation make sense, but using WoW as an example just smacks of buying into the fear mongering of those who don’t understand computer games.
I think you’re a little off the mark here Moorgard. The military GETS games- both as entertainment, as training, and as public relations. They’re not fearmongering the games, they’re trying to learn more of them. Heck, they have an office dedicated to it now. They’re funding heavily in learning games and in establishing the standards for integrating game engines with simulation. Heck, the marine corps is developing what’s essentially a “level editor” easy enough for the basic jarhead squad leader to use for virtual sand tables. They gave there.com (I think) tech to research building fast virtual world models for anywhere in the world.
These guys get games. They enjoy games. They see the value in games and they USE games.
When you do that, and your job involves a healthy dose of paranoia, the next question has to be, “Are THEY using them too? How?”
“Back then there were only so many ways to communicate incognito, and now there are virtually limitless ways.”
Which is what they’re looking into, as games can be just another one of those new-fangled ways to communicate.
In the dark ages when I was in military intelligence, we played lots of war games that had a lot of D&D elements, with random dice rolls and the whole bit. During one exercise the OPFOR commander (for whom one of my buddies was providing virtual commo support) came to our table and yelled at us for lousy rolls! Needless to say, the next time it was time to roll for his result, my buddy “happened” to roll snake eyes which cause that commander to lose a unit.
Nowadays, they can do all this sort of stuff without actual dice, using computer games. If folks choose WoW as their medium, that’s part of the new ways to plan and get together with people from all over, for whatever purpose.