Geeks really are Winning the War

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb20080716_470794.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

This Business Week article: remote control planes being used in areal combat. Yes, we can now win the war from the luxury of our own living rooms. Well, not quite, but close.

Instead, the pilots sit behind three LCD monitors, safely away from the fighting, scanning for their next target. "As remote-controlled planes take on larger military roles in both Iraq and Afghanistan, defense companies are borrowing techniques from the video-game industry to make it easier for pilots on the ground to fly these unmanned aircraft from afar." This opens the market for teen soldiers in remarkable ways.

I can't think of a better behind-the-screen soldier than some of the 15-22 year olds playing first-person-shooter (FPS) games. In most ways they are primed for combat, having grown up grooming their online predatory skills with years of videogames. Now that games are so realistic--take Stalker, for example, where you can see the pores on your target's face before blowing it away--it is a small step for players to move from virtual to actual human targets.

I worry about the ethical implications of this shift. Teens already have a hard time relating to others--that is part of what being a teen is about. Setting young people in front of a "videogame" that kills people may make it more difficult to relate the sense of mortality to these soldiers. Does the abstraction change the way post-traumatic stress works for soldiers? Do the same realizations happen when you sit behind a screen killing people? Is that for the better or the worse?

Many questions won't be answered for a while, but I believe that this changing dynamic will impact warfare, and soldiers and families of soldiers, in the future.