The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information
Warfare
Stephen Stockwell and Adam Muir
Griffith University
All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation
synchronically; a chess piece cannot...Chess is indeed a war but
an institutionalized, regulated, coded war... Go is war without
battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without
battles even: pure strategy, whereas Chess is a semiology. (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1989: 353)
A revolution in military affairs (RMA) has taken place in the US
since the first Gulf War as the data-processing power of the computer
has been applied not only to the strategic complexities that had
prompted the development of the computer in the first place but,
now, to the systematic operations of small units and individuals.
The ability to micro-manage the organisation of logistics has raised
the possibility of micro-managing the organization of information
to target particular audiences among both the enemy and one's own
populations to produce close control of the media agenda. This process
rests on the technologies and techniques that elide reality and
simulation and mirror similar trends apparent in late capitalism's
embrace of the globilisation project. The RMA may also be seen as
the US military-corporate-political response to the post-Cold War
spread of fundamentalisms (both Islamic and Christian) and even
as a means to police the emerging US Empire.
A number of authors have documented the rise of the information
terrain as a major field of military endeavour. Greg Rattray considers
the United States development of strategic information warfare in
the '90s and finds many similarities with their development of strategic
air power in the '20s, '30s and '40s (2001). Dorothy Denning argues
for a view of information warfare based in the available countermeasures
to economic threats such as computer break-ins, fraud, sabotage,
espionage, piracy, identity theft and invasions of privacy (Denning,
1999). In a similar vein John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, working
for the Rand Corporation contract from the Office of the US Secretary
of Defense, suggest the rise of netwar in the work of transnational
criminal networks, gangs, hooligans, and anarchists while they spend
a lot of time analysing the role of the internet in promoting democracy
in Burma and Mexico (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001). Again Andy Jones,
Gerald Kovacich and Perry Luzwick approach information warfare from
the point of view of the CEO looking for competitive advantage (2002).
In contrast, Gerard Stocker and Christine Schopf draw together a
range of views, offered at the Ars Electronica Festival '98 Symposium,
critical of the intrusive and manipulative practices of the military
establishment (Stocker and Schopf, 1998). James Der Derian's map
of the emerging military-industrial-media-entertainment complex
hints at the new connections emerging as the US military co-opts
advances in games technology developed by the entertainment industry
(Der Derian, 2002).
But the recent war in Iraq extended the information war concept
into new territory. It was different to previous wars in one major
way: this war was waged as entertainment. It is not that the sight
of a pathetically armed and disorganised rabble being blasted to
oblivion by a massively armed military machine is in itself entertaining,
though the ratings were not bad. Rather the US war machine has learnt
much from the entertainment industry and is now pursuing battle
plans that treat the "enemy" as the audience. This is what shock
and awe is all about – give them a big production number and their
hearts and minds will follow.
The entertainment paradigm is used not only to wage war against
the Iraqis but also to manage the home front. The words of one senior
White House official sums up the approach: 'Boom, boom, we're going
in hard and fast,' the official said. 'By this time next week, sit
by your TV and get ready to watch the fireworks' (Coorey and Schlink,
2003). War as entertainment even played a role in focusing the efforts
of US troops. As Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating told a massed meeting
of US personnel just before the war: 'Make no mistake, when the
president says go, look out, it's hammer time' (Roberts, 2003).
This a direct reference to the stylings of rap musician, MC Hammer.
But the enemy is not always in on the act. The US has forgotten
the power of the active audience so that Lt. General William S.
Wallace was left to complain: 'The enemy we're fighting is a bit
different to the one we war-gamed against…'. [1]
Former US President Eisenhower warned in 1961 of the power of the
Military Industrial Complex shortly before that confection of influence
peddling, political opportunism and inter-locking commercial interests
led the US into Vietnam. Now there is a new force in the land, the
military-entertainment complex evident in the close co-operation
– and sharing – of ideas and resources: between computer games producers
and the military, particularly on pre-training prospective candidates
for the US armed forces; between Hollywood producers and the US
government on language and concepts post September 11, 2001; and
between the military's propaganda machine and the entertainment
industry's thirst for manufactured and timely "reality" that precludes
the possibility of the critical representation of the real.
The flexibility of the military-entertainment complex is evident
in the interchange of personnel between both wings, from military
to entertainment (Coffee, 1995 : 30; Pollack, 1997: 1) or a virtual-reality
expert from Disney's Imagineering group joining the National Security
Agency (Peter Huck, 2003). In the carefully plotted production of
the second Gulf War, it seems that the military has turned to the
entertainment industry to respond to Baudrilliard's critique of
the first Gulf War:
…the war, along with the fake and presumptive warriors,
generals, experts and television presenters… watches itself
in a mirror: am I pretty enough, am I operational enough, am I
spectacular enough, am I sophisticated enough to make an entry
onto the historical stage? … this uncertainty invades our
screens like a real oil slick, in the image of that blind sea
bird stranded on a beach in the Gulf, which will remain the symbol-image
of what we all are in front of our screens, in front of that sticky
and unintelligible event. (Baudrilliard, 1995: 31)
From the attention-grabbing intro of fireworks over Baghdad, through
the chase scenes of tanks racing across the desert, with the sub-plot
of Saving Private Jessica to the toppling of Saddam's statue, this
time the story was seamless. Each moment designed for prime time,
each plot point subtly inter-woven into one unstoppable meta-narrative.
Resistance is futile, you can't stop the music. At least until the
President declares the war is over and the real war begins between
an occupying army and a fanatical guerrilla opposition indistinguishable
from the population. It took about six months to move the full circle.
The simulations that began as theories about reality for planning
and training purposes took on the form of reality in the heat of
battle only to be revealed to be inaccurate as either reality or
simulation in the harsh light of peace. Private Jessica's own disavowal
of the military's mythology is a case in point: the military continues
to claim she was raped while Jessica denies it.
The military uses of entertainment and entertainment's uses of
the military have a long history that precedes their well-orchestrated
double act in the recent troubles. It is useful to consider how
their purposes came to be so closely integrated, not only to appreciate
the actual course of recent history (as opposed to the big concept
story lines of good vs. evil that occupy the front pages and TV
news breaks). But also to understand the possibilities for countering
the growing power of the military-entertainment complex.
A Quick and Dirty Pre-History
The military have always found a use for entertainment. Recruiting
songs and marching songs prepared the soldier's mind to over-ride
the self-preservation mechanism in the heat of battle. Propaganda
has always been best served as entertainment. Goebbels knew that
'…to be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of the
audience' and movies made under his control worked within existing
genres, particularly the musical, to spread the Nazi message (Doob,
1954: 513). He is reported in the documentary We Have Ways of
Making You Think to have told one producer: 'Don't come to me
with political films'. Goebbels conceived propaganda as the production
of a total world-view inculcated subtly into the populace to produce
responses that matched the requirements of the regime. Casablanca
worked on a similar plane for the United States, using the conventions
of the thriller and romance to make its anti-isolationist point,
teaching its audience how to achieve both the sublimation and realisation
of romantic love via commitment to the war effort (Mayer, 1982).
During the Second World War, the United States systematised relations
with Hollywood. So as not to disrupt studio shooting schedules,
stars were enlisted into the armed forces part-time without the
expectation of fighting but rather to service the publicity requirements
of recruitment and war bond drives. United Services Organization
(USO) shows featured Hollywood stars like Bob Hope to provide entertainment
to battle-weary troops and the Department of Defense gave Hollywood
many story lines and the logistical support to make them into films.
The military also used the entertainment industry's radio broadcast
and marketing expertise in psychological operations (PSYOPS) to
build support for the Allied war effort behind enemy lines.
The Cold War space race provided the impetus for the military and
entertainment industry to work more closely as their technologies
merged with the introduction of geo-stationary satellites. Suddenly
they were in the same business: information management. The military
saw a satellite system as a crucial element in its global reconnaissance
and command system. Satellites also gave the military the opportunity
to gather signals intelligence (SIGINT) including radio and television
signals from anywhere in the world. At the same time telecommunications
and the burgeoning television industries saw opportunities to build
an international network for gathering and distributing content.
Separate satellite networks had the potential to be disrupted by
attack on just one satellite, so in March 1964 President Johnson
approved the procurement of satellite communication services under
National Security Action Memorandum 252. This required the Secretary
of Defense to enter into business arrangements with the "quasi-private"
Communication Satellite Corporation to provide half of the cost
for two 18-piece independent satellite systems capable of world-wide
traffic even after attack. The remaining funding for the project
came from the formation of Intelsat, an international communications
consortium. [2]
The military origins of the computer and the internet are well-documented.
Hinsley and Stripp discuss the origins of the computer in World
War II cryptography, particularly that carried out at Blenchley
Park as the Allies cracked the German's Enigma coding machine (1993).
The Internet grew from work done by the Pentagon-funded Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during the Cold War that
developed protocols allowing networked computers to send small packets
of data to one another (Lister, 2003, 165). The US establishment
saw their failures in the Vietnam War of the 1960s and '70s to result
from a lack of communication between themselves and the US population.
The military control of information had been disrupted by independent
journalists using light-weight equipment to get stories onto the
evening news that varied graphically from the official story. By
the first Gulf War, the military had re-exerted control so effectively
that journalists were physically constrained from approaching the
front lines and had no option but to cover the prepared story. This
produced a high level of dissent from journalists but more significantly
their stories lacked the cohesion required to carry the people with
them, as was evident in the first George Bush's subsequent defeat.
To counter this effect, the United States sought to engineer a revolution
in military affairs (RMA) that applied the revolution in information
technology to military purposes. This sought to leverage the massive
increases in distributed computational power not only to solve the
problems of the battlefield but also to manage the psychology of
both enemy and one's own population. In the first instance this
saw the development of a technology management strategy that utilised
commercial multimedia solutions for military purposes. [3]
In 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) developed a joint
research agenda for defense and entertainment, particularly in the
modeling and simulation areas where common problems and synergies
were apparent in the development of immersion technologies, networked
simulations, interoperability, computer-generated characters and
tools for creating simulated environments. In the entertainment
industry, such technology lies at the heart of video games, theme
park attractions and entertainment centres, and special effects
for film production. For the Department of Defense, modeling and
simulation technology provides a low-cost means of conducting joint
training exercises, evaluating new doctrine and tactics, and studying
the effectiveness of new weapons systems. [4]
While defense and entertainment had historically
opposed cultures, the 1990s saw the emergence of common economic
interests based around the sharing of opportunities produced by
the rapid pace of technological development. Some argue that tremendous
technological innovation and growth in the entertainment industry
offer a strategic advantage to the military that it misses at its
own peril (Capps, McDowell and Zyda, 2001: 37-43). In return, the
entertainment industry integrates its interests more closely with
those of the United States government which has now set out to create
a "free trade" in cultural products that will effectively secure
a US entertainment hegemony throughout the world producing "captive"
audiences.
War Games
In the mid-90s, in a bid to streamline government defense spending,
there was a conscious decision by the U.S. military to move away
from sub-contracting to outside interests for their development
needs. Instead they began a campaign to bring skilled people into
the forces to foster their own R&D culture and that had major
implications for the relationship between the military and entertainment
industries based particularly in their joint interest in games.
The military are very familiar with the reality of simulation, particularly
as games – they have been part of their training about strategy
as long as commanders have coordinated groups of people for large-scale
combat. As Michelle Barron notes:
Games of all sorts – video games, board games, and games kids
play in the backyard – have historically been about conflict and
warfare. Whether you're playing Chess, which is a simulated battlefield,
or a game like Go, an ancient Chinese game that is also a simulated
battlefield, or you're playing a board game like Risk or Axis
and Allies, you're essentially at war and you're playing out military
conflict. The history continues with electronic games. (Barron,
2003)
Further Tim Lenoir and Henry Loward also point out that the:
...notion of the war game as a simulation, as an imitation of
combat by other means, preceded the use of computer-based models
for encoding rules, data, and procedures. War games have taken
many forms ranging from large-scale field exercises to abstract
strategy games played with maps, counters or miniatures. (Lenoir
and Loward, 2002)
In particular during the twentieth century, air crew training came
to depend on the use of simulators that allowed pilots to practice
flying without putting their lives, or more importantly, their expensive
aircraft in danger. Flight simulators made a quick transition to
the digital and many early computers shipped with games that gave
the experience of flying. Lenoir and Loward track the development
of the initially tenuous links between the computer simulation industry
and the US military and the subsequent development of intimate connections
between them (2002). These connections share an interest in computing
technology that could deliver optimal performance, high reality
simulations.
The military have been dabbling directly in the commercial computer
game environment for less than a decade. In 1996, Marine Corps Commandant
General Charles C. Krulak issued a directive suggesting that Marines
use PC-based wargames to improve military thinking about the tactics
and techniques of modern warfare (Lister, 2003). This led to the
first concerted attempt at harnessing computer gaming technology
and led to the military release of an add-on pack (a mod) for Id
Software's Doom II. The mod is now readily available to download
from the World Wide Web. You still need a copy of Doom II
in order to use the mod, but once you have installed the modification
the whole game changes into a real-life simulation where the monsters
become terrorists and the locations become realistic (ID Software,
1997). In 2001 the US Military assembled a team of designers (under
the name Rival Interactive) to create a real-time strategy
combat game called Real War in the same vein as Command
and Conquer. The purpose of Real War was to teach soldiers
how to think like commanders (Lenoir and Loward, 2002).
Such moves, testing the waters of commercial technologies, planted
the seeds for the eventual development of the Department of Defense
funded computer game America's Army by the MOVES Institute,
based at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
In a pre-design briefing, the creators expressed their goal for
the project (which exists in two parts: Operations and Soldiers)
as two-fold: 'We conceived America's Army: Soldiers as a
realistic look at army personal and career opportunities via sophisticated
role-playing... Our goal within America's Army:Operations was
to demonstrate life in the infantry' (Lenoir and Loward, 2002).
In practice, the educational value of the project seems incidental
to what America's Army: Operations actually is: a multiplayer
first-person-shooter game. As anyone who has played any multi-user
shooter game knows, when you get people in a death-match game it
becomes a free-for-all where expert players race through and show
off their immensely honed skills with the game interface by slaughtering
other players. In a typical training scenario, America's Army
will deploy the "team" of marines near the zone of engagement. The
first thing the user learns when playing is that you can't afford
to be flippant about things. One well-aimed shot to the avatar's
vital zones and it's lights out. As the player's avatar expires,
the corpse slumps to the ground (or is thrown forward like a crash-test-dummy,
depending on the physics of the weapon causing digital demise).
Then for the remaining time that the skirmish plays out (until one
side achieves the objective or a whole team is defeated), the user
is detached from the game and becomes an "observer" who can change
the camera view but otherwise cannot affect the game.
The elements of strategy and teamwork, and of gradually gaining
experience and rewards for playing the game as often as you can
(and very importantly: playing the game by the rules), creates an
environment which frustrates the kind of player-killer approach
most games have. There is no Deathmatch function per se (that is,
every player against every other player), but that doesn't deter
players from running amok and slaughtering anyone left standing.
In fact one can find opposing players co-operating by letting themselves
be shot so their friends could build up skill points and in the
next turn their friends stand still while the player slaughters
them for extra points in return. Hardly the sort of rule-bending
the Army wants to encourage. Further, the game is at the bleeding-edge
of graphics technology, with a crisp and clean take on reality that
forgoes the cartoon feel of many games. Yet it is strangely sanitised,
promoting violence and death, which involve no blood or thrashing
about. The simulation loses touch with reality and the result for
the user is quite surreal.
Hollywood and the Beverly Hills Summit
In November of 2001, top Hollywood executives, key players in the
film and television industry including Jack Valenti, chairman of
the Motion Picture Association of America, met with Bush Administration
officials in Beverley Hills to discuss ways that the film and television
industry could assist in the War Against Terror. White House strategist
Karl Rove briefed the executives on the war effort, stressing that
he had no intention of giving marching orders to Hollywood. 'The
industry will decide what it will do and when it will do it', he
said as he emerged from the Sunday morning meeting. Instead Rove
explained the White House's seven-point message:
…that the war is against terrorism, not Islam; that Americans
must be called to national service; that Americans should support
the troops; that this is a global war that needs a global response;
that this is a war against evil; that American children have to
be reassured; and that instead of propaganda, the war effort needs
a narrative that should be told, said a straight-faced Rove, with
accuracy and honesty. (Cooper, 2001: 13)
Jack Valenti argued that there was no question of Hollywood turning
to pro-war propaganda films; instead discussions centred around
public service spots for TV and cinemas, documentaries on terrorism
and homeland security, live shows for American troops featuring
Hollywood stars and help spreading the American message abroad (Lyman,
2001). A patriotic, three-minute montage of movie clips, The
Spirit of America, was duly shown in US cinemas (Huck, 2002).
This meeting merely formalised the status quo. Hollywood barely
needs the White House's guidance in toeing the line as they do it
not only instinctively but also with an eye to the patriotic bottom
line. The rush to self-censorship in the aftermath of September
11 provides a useful case in point. Many film studios edited films
(Spiderman) or postponed their release (Schwarzenegger's
Collateral Damage) where it was thought they contained material
that the audience might judge unpatriotic or too close to actual
events (Townsend, 2002). At this point Hollywood abdicated its rights
and responsibilities to pursue debate in a knee-jerk attempt to
second guess the audience.
Of course, Hollywood cannot be treated as a monolithic ideological
enterprise. Actors such as Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins led nation-wide
resistance to the Iraq war. However, the historic relationship between
the military and the entertainment industry has firm foundations
in an economic-ideological trade that both sides find mutually beneficial:
practical assistance from the military also assists the studios'
budget bottom line and in return the military has special access
to tamper with stories. Scenarios for overtly patriotic movies such
as Top Gun, Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down are vetted
by Pentagon officials before producers are given access to expensive
weaponry to assist production. [5]
Beyond these contractual obligations, the
integrating power of American ideology is apparent: even an ostensibly
anti-war movie like Apocalypse Now, which did not depend
on the availability of US military hardware, turns into a celebration
of the American spirit: 'I love the smell of Napalm in the morning'
has been shorn of its irony to become a testament of faith among
rednecks everywhere.
The Beverley Hills summit was significant because it did formalise
the relationships and expectations on which the propaganda facets
of the military-entertainment complex rely. While industry and government
both purport to disavow propaganda, the government is clear in its
expectations of media (to define evil, to rally the populace behind
the military and to create sympathetic narratives) and the industry
is clear in its contributions (public service announcements, documentaries
and the allegiance of its stars demonstrated via shows for the troops).
Another activity of the entertainment industry that is useful to
the military is the constant testing and trading of story-lines
that precedes the production of movies and games. This hot-housing
of scenarios, particularly outside regular security and intelligence
channels, provides valuable input into the analysis of potential
threats and tactics. To work most effectively, the game theory models
employed by US strategists include the full gamut of possible moves
and while the disciplined thinkers of the National Security Advisors
office are good at manipulating the data, they need the creative
input of Hollywood to ensure that they have the wide selection of
data they require.
At the time of the Beverley Hills Summit another meeting took place
at the Institute for Creative Technology, affiliated with the University
of Southern California:
Set up in 1999 with a $US50 million ($A92 million) budget provided
by the US Army, (the ICT) seeks to create advanced training simulators
that will help the army shift from a Cold War mentality into a
more flexible force, able to respond within 96 hours to complex
missions – from civil wars to natural disasters. (Huck, 2002)
Sponsored by the Institute, a group of 30 screenwriters, directors
and producers who normally work on action films and video games
met to devise possible terrorist scenarios. 16 new scenarios were
dispatched to Washington. For some time Paramount has been supplying
the Pentagon with rewrites of simulation exercises adding three-dimensional
characterisations with complex histories and personalities that
prepare trainees for the complexities of an actual crisis. Paramount
remains reluctant to discuss its involvement in the StoryDrive Engine
project but it is understood that it produces versions of the flood
of information that comes at a real national-security team during
a crisis: from classified intelligence reports to State Department
cables, military analysis and even real-time news coverage. Thousands
of military personnel have passed through the "final flurry exercise",
as the project is called (Lippman, 2001).
Thus, besides its propaganda work, Hollywood brings central strategic
skills to the practices of information war. The ability to understand
formulas and how to play with them, to think outside the box, against
the grain and backwards from completion provided by the entertainment
industry gives the military a much deeper and more subtle grasp
of the realities it faces, as long as they factor in Hollywood's
propensity to simulate.
The Battle for Reality: News and Counter-News
All war is a fight for the right to define the reality of the situation
and the United States took the pre-emptive option when military
hackers and special operations forces sought to corrupt Iraqi air
defence networks and toy with their email system to sow confusion
and distrust among the Iraqis (Mannion, 2003). Reuters reported
in February that President Bush ordered his government to draw up
guidelines for cyber attacks against enemy computer networks (2003).
Of particular significance was the flurry of bogus emails in the
first days of the war that suggested Deputy Prime Minister Tariq
Aziz was defecting. The story was attributed to a Bulgarian source
by UK Foreign Office minister and picked up by various news networks,
including Fox News and MSNBC. The "defection" is now viewed
as a ruse by the Pentagon's disinformation outlets (Fahey, 2003).
This is textbook information warfare, spam assaults that massage
reality to sow confusion among the enemy and build confidence at
home. However, the second Gulf War saw the military-entertainment
complex move to an even more heightened level of information war
that seeks to use mass media channels systematically to massage
reality not only for home consumption but also, and most significantly,
as part of an integrated weapons system aimed at the enemy.
One of the most significant developments in the mediasphere between
the first and second Gulf Wars was the emergence of reality television.
Based in documentary formats, particularly cinema verité,
but without any of the critical edge to which that genre usually
aspires, reality TV offered immediacy, intimacy and drama but limited
its purpose to mere entertainment. Early successes of the reality
TV genre include Cops, a show that ceded the point of view
to the law enforcement officer while demonising alleged offenders.
As the genre matured, it began to apply the same fly-on-the-wall
approach to increasingly manufactured and competitive environments
such as Survivor and Big Brother. In the more serious
mood after September 11, the frivolity of reality TV became a potential
turn-off factor, so some of the studios turned to the military for
content. The military were at this time looking for ways to keep
the public interested in the War on Terror that did not promise
the constant and engaging fire works of earlier conflicts. As James
Poniewozik observes: 'The symbiotic solution: send reality TV to
war' (2002). With Pentagon co-operation, networks scheduled programs
such as Boot Camp (following a group through the rigours
of military induction), Profiles from the Front Line (personal
stories from military personnel in Afghanistan, the Philippines
and elsewhere), Military Diaries (MTV-sponsored soldiers
with cameras record their days and talk about the music that helps
them survive) and American Fighter Pilot (produced by Top Gun director
Tony Scott, follows three F-15 pilots through training). The programs
had mixed success. The comic antics and competitive tension in Boot
Camp saw it run for a whole season while the gritty production
values of American Fighter Pilot produced poor ratings and
saw the show canned after two episodes. Thus one might see the limits
of the entertainment industry as a propaganda tool – the propaganda
must still be entertaining.
The US military learned from their reality TV experience and realised
that while excluding journalists from the information flow ensured
no commentary critical of command processes, it did not always make
interesting television. In the run up to the second Gulf War, the
military decided to put the journalist back in the mix but in ways
that allowed the military command – and news editors – to control
the story. Journalists were given the opportunity to be embedded
within military units. This essentially gave the journalists a soldier's
view of the war so while the process offered moments of intense
action and excitement, most of the time journalists were witnesses
to the mundane reality of war: waiting for orders, achieving complex
tasks for no apparent reason and so on. Further, the close relationships
that sprung up between journalists and soldiers had the potential
to compromise the quality of the journalists' coverage because they
were too easily pulled into the world view of the soldiers who were
feeding and protecting them.
The activities of the military-entertainment complex reached a
high-point in the saving of Private Jessica. Captured and hospitalised
by the Iraqis, Jessica Lynch was rescued by Marines. The first footage
of the operation released by the military featured a frantic search
through the corridors of the hospital filmed with night-vision filters
that gave the images a green glow. The texture of the shots broadcast
around the world was similar to textures found in games like Doom
or Quake and had a sense of urgency reminiscent of those
games. The attractive Ms. Lynch was quickly dubbed a hero, her capture
blamed on Iraqi attack and her rescue facilitated by a doctor who
had witnessed her torture. A bidding war broke out among TV networks
over the rights to her story (Wright, 2003). It now transpires that
Lynch was injured when she got lost and her truck collided with
another from her unit; she was rescued from the desert by Iraqis
who far from torturing her provided sound medical treatment; the
doctor with information was in fact a lawyer and the military operation
to rescue her was unnecessary as the Iraqis had already withdrawn
– an ambulance would have sufficed. The TV networks are still interested
in the movie rights. It is expected that Jessica Lynch's story will
continue to blur distinctions between news and entertainment, factuality
and actuality as it is turned into a movie of the week – 'based
on a true story'.
Alternative Strategies for Information Warfare
There is a danger that critics of US policy will throw up their
hands in despair when faced with the force of the military-entertainment
complex, with the intimate fit it can produce between reality and
simulation. Information war was bad enough, but what happens when
the war moves from the computers and into the wiring of all the
entertainment appliances around the house. Some may argue that the
military-entertainment complex's ability to define and manage reality
is such a mind-suck that resistance is futile. Against this defeatism,
the suggestion is made that subverting, co-opting and reconstructing
the military-entertainment complex provides new possibilities for
strategies of alternative information warfare.
To make the point theoretically in Deleuzean terms: when the State
appropriates a war machine (like the entertainment industry), it
lays the foundations for the war machine to appropriate the State.
While the war machine may be transfixed by the hyperreal, it is
liable to 'continually recreate unexpected possibilities for counter-attack,
unforeseen initiatives determining revolutionary, popular, minority,
mutant machines' (Deleuze and Guattari, 1989: 422). In considering
the categories discussed above, there is a rich profusion of mutant
possibilities. In the first place games, through their binary nature,
often provide the opportunity to play the role of the terrorist.
By toying with the point of view (POV), experience of the simulation
can create new empathies. Alternatively, games or pseudo games can
be quickly adapted and produced to carry sophisticated anti-war
messages. At one site there is a Flash production that mimics a
game while working through possible game theory moves as a result
of the second Gulf War. It was in place before the war began but
has been surprisingly accurate in predicting the complex outcomes
of the war. [6]
With regard to Hollywood product, the power of the audience to
create their own readings of the movie or game can never be underestimated
and any increase in propaganda output is only likely to create cynicism
among the viewers. Similarly, management of news either through
embedded journalists or the simulacra of the news created by reality
TV tends to produce scepticism among the audience as was evidenced
by the cancellation of various poorly performing military-based
reality TV programs. Further, the experience of some journalists
shows that they were not made so complicit by embedding, particularly
where they used satellite phone and lightweight editing technology
to cut and transmit stories straight back to their newsrooms so
they avoided reliance on military communication channels. Good journalists
are always testing to see where the limits really are and what they
can get away with. Iraq was no different.
Then there are the challenges to the mainstream media provided
by new media interventions. When people became disillusioned with
the managed news provided by the mainstream, they could quickly
find alternative sources via the internet. The work of Salam Pax
is particularly instructive. Using a simple and available weblog
technology, this anonymous Iraqi was able to post updates about
life on the streets of Baghdad until very late in the war. His work
provided a good reality check to the mainstream media and foreshadowed
the likely nature of news coverage in future wars.
If the military is now so integrated into the entertainment industry,
if we are at a new stage of information war where reality and simulation
are fused, then it is incumbent upon those with an alternative view
to create new forums and methods to debate and organise. Alternative
means of disseminating information to large audiences still remain
the most effective way of countering the large-scale operation of
the State-funded info-war project. One of the more pressing questions
for the responsible global citizen/audience is how to counter the
feeling that the individual is indeed a hostage to the streams of
information channeled through very precise vectors of distribution.
The alternative media maker and user's greatest asset is the porosity
of the media monolith, its constant search for new product, the
opportunities created by competition between media outlets and its
dependence on humans who have independent opinions. The media is
always open for business for those who can play the game and toy
with the interaction between simulation and reality.
The real danger for the entertainment business, which has for so
long enjoyed the benefits of free speech, is that it now is in danger
of becoming an agent for the closure of debate. We depend on the
media to use their freedom of speech to allow a variety of opinions
to circulate. The fate of the Dixie Chicks is eloquent here: the
sudden drop in their record sales following a mild statement of
opposition to the war has sent former critics of the war into a
disorderly retreat. The ghost of senator Joseph McCarthy, leader
of the 1950s anti-communist blacklist, was seen on the battlements
and the ball is back in our court. The exercise of free speech has
always come at a cost, particularly for those taking an alternative
viewpoint in times of war. Nevertheless, in face of the massive
simulation that is the war against terror, one cannot help but think
that the market for reality is about to improve.
Authors' Biographies
Dr Stephen Stockwell is a senior lecturer in journalism and communication
at Griffith University's Gold Coast campus. He is interested in
the intersection of politics and the media generally and has recently
completed a book on political campaign strategy.
Adam Muir is a PhD student at Griffith University's Gold Coast
campus. His topic concerns the development of natural languages
in new media communities.
Notes
[1] 'Who Said What about the War, and When They
Said it', St Louis Post-Dispatch, 6 April (2003): 7.
[back]
[2] 'National Security Action Memorandum 252', LBJ
archives (Austin: University of Texas, 1964).
[back]
[3] Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems
(CETS), 'Commercial Multimedia Technologies for Twenty-First Century
Army Battlefields: A Technology Management Strategy', (Washington
DC: National Academies Press, 1995), http://www.nap.edu/books/0309053781/html/
[back]
[4] Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
(CSTB), 'Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense'
(Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1997), http://www.nap.edu/books/0309058422/html/index.html
[back]
[5] 'Pentagon provides for Hollywood', USA Today,
29 March (2001), http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2001-05-17-pentagon-helps-hollywood.htm
[back]
[6] See the Gulf War 2 (World War v2.5) Flash simulation
here, http://www.idleworm.com/nws/2002/11/iraq2.shtml
[back]
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