And we get this from science fiction.
That might sound fanciful, but many militaries are already engaging with the genre.
TheUS militaryandthe French armyuse science-fiction writers to generate future threat scenarios.
TheSigma Forum, a science fiction think tank, has been offering forecasting services to US officials for years.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
But the relationship between military planners and science fiction is a troubled one.
If you think this all sounds like science-fiction, youd be right.
Fiction to fact
Yet these texts dont really make it into the military planning report.
But in sidelining science fiction, something is lost.
Science fiction is always about the second-and third-order effects of technology effects military planners may not anticipate.
Thats the true value of science fiction for those concerned with the future.
Technologies arent neutral but operate within a discourse set by the stories that are told about them.
This affects their development and possible applications (and misapplications).
When augmentation has been imagined in fictional worlds, its often associated with profound new inequalities and conflicts.
How are societies navigate the emergence of bring your own enhancement technologies in the workplace?
What black markets might come about to perform such augmentations on the cheap?
Military planners are right to foreground these issues now.
But they should also consider science fiction as more than just a fictional background to real-life debates.
