The Washington Post quotes M.A. and George Lund Fellow for Emerging Defense Challenges Steven Grundman and Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Fellow Dave Anthony on the future of unknown conflict:
Steven Grundman was sitting on his couch, watching his son play the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops II” when he was struck by an idea that, he thinks, might just change how policy experts approach the future of war.
Grundman, a George Lund fellow for emerging defense challenges at the Atlantic Council, saw the game’s attention to detail and realistic depiction of war in the year 2025 as realistic enough to be a plausible answer to the question of what war might look like one day.
“It occurred to me that the perspective of artists on this question is compelling and insightful and it’s also different,” Grundman said. “One feature that struck me was the combination of both familiar technologies and novel ones.”
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Anthony, who is originally from England, said he first heard from Grundman in April, shortly after Grundman encountered his son playing the video game.
“We have a perception of Washington that someone wouldn’t be forward-thinking enough to contact creative people to predict… future conflicts and the nature of what these conflict will be,” Anthony said. “The fact that they contacted a video game director to help them with that was flabbergasting.”
Anthony believes that artists and other creative types have the ability to approach policy issues in an entirely different manner — a manner, Anthony hopes, that will change how Washington looks at threats to national security and future wars.