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CIA Making Their Own Video Game
from the all-those-analysts-sitting-around-the-Xbox dept
The US Army has certainly received a ton of publicity for making their own video game, so it appears the CIA has decided to move into the video game making business as well. Of course, this isn’t a video game for the outside world. Instead, it’s designed to help their analysts “think outside the box”, by putting them into scenarios where they play the role of terrorists or some other part, such as a customs official. This way, the argument runs, it forces them to think about things from a different perspective. While the article quotes a few who say this is a ridiculous waste of money, and on the same level as Poindexter’s plan to bet on assassination attempts, I don’t think it’s that bad of an idea. Forcing people to see things from a different perspective often allows for much more creative thinking, and should be encouraged.
Comments on “CIA Making Their Own Video Game”
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but surely the game itself has a “box” that they think outside of, so unless they get some rabid fundamentalist to create the game’s ultimate framework (within which is the “box” for a democratic western nation) this will be no training at all?
Simulation vs Prediction
Need to be a little carefule here. Poindexter’s plan was probably put forward in response, not to studies suggesting a greater knowldge known by a group, but to actual open-ended futures markets that operate in other parts of the world. Certainly the best indicator of the 9/11 attack were short selling in our very own legalized gambling futures stock market. Open-ended futures markets are merely a method by which signal can be extracted from noise.
Anyway, this is very different from a simulation in which you have automatic feeds from various signals intelligence sources (ship lications, international cellphone/fax usage, location of known red-force operatives, targeting data, etc.) If they’re trying to model the emergence of groups with common goals via a sims based model, I think they’re just going to be wasting taxpayer dollars (something that they’ve become very good at lately).
Funny thing thought… all the teen-geek news sites carried the story eventhough it has very little to do with gaming as the average person knows it.