For the past several iterations, the Call of Duty game franchise has taken players to the near future to fight in fictional conflicts filled with drones, adaptive camouflage and other pieces of emerging and deadly technology. While the wars fought in Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the upcoming Advanced Warfare aren't real, some of the tech and their deadly uses are, or will, be a reality in the not-so-distant future.
It's for that reason that the political think-tank the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. has brought onboard Call of Duty: Black Ops II writer and director Dave Anthony as an expert to help think about ways America could be better prepared to deal with the threats of tomorrow's conflicts. For an example of how Anthony's mind works, in Black Ops II, a terrorist hijacks America's drone infrastructure and uses the nation's robotic weapons for his own nefarious purposes, including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.
Anthony will contribute to the "Art of Future Warfare" project at the Sowcroft Center on International Security, which looks at books, movies and video games depicting the next-generation of warfare and mines them for potential ideas and real-world insights.
As Anthony explains in the above video, the conflicts of the future will be unlike any of the wars before and defy conventional definitions of warfare. A game developer like himself can imagine fantastic scenarios that could potentially come true, highlighting a scene from Black Ops II where armed drones attack a G20 meeting. The Atlantic Council is hiring Anthony to think of and identify possible scenarios exactly like that.
"His forward thinking on emerging threats will better position the Scowcroft Center to provide cutting-edge analysis on how the United States must adapt for the future," Barry Pavel, Atlantic Council vice president says.
Anthony says he is impressed by the Atlantic Council's out of the box thinking in attempting to find solutions for the problems of tomorrow.
"I really believe that artists can help with this problem," Anthony says."If you look at 9/11 for example, it is a scene out of a movie, it is literally a scene out of a movie."
While Anthony won't be directly shaping U.S. policy, his expertise will no doubt help the Atlantic Council and lawmakers stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the increasingly tech-based world of armed conflict.
