Science fiction novelists put MOD on alert for future threats

Defence chiefs harness the imagination of authors to help them plan for menace from ‘emerging technology’

SCIENCE FICTION writers have been enlisted by the Ministry of Defence to help officials imagine what wars of the future will look like.

The MOD commissioned two science fiction novelists to write eight short-stories about the “threats that may arise during the next 20 years” from “emerging technologies”.

The stories imagine how developments such as artificial intelligence, drone swarms and quantum computing could be applied on battlefields, as well as how the shift to net zero could spark conflicts over green technologies.

One raises the spectre of a Chinese state-backed tech company triggering a coup in Indonesia to jeopardise “the entire global gambit to reach a net zero world”, while another alludes to the “Fall of France”.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the division of the MOD which commissioned the project, said sci-fi writers had in the past “predicted – or inspired – inventions from cell phones and credit cards to submarines and driverless vehicles”. It said the creative writing project could help the Armed Forces spot and prepare for other possible future developments.

One short story conjures up a vision of the future where a failed digital artist codenamed Corporal wants to start a war and suggests British soldiers might end up in a face-to-face conflict with Russia.

“After his assumption of power following appointment to the chancellorship, foreign leader designated Corporal demanded international action to defend his ethnic kin in the disputed border region to his nation’s south,” the piece reads. Mass surveillance technology allows British intelligence to discover that the dictator risks being overthrown in a coup if he goes ahead with his genocidal plans.

Another suggests the UK could be invaded by a technologically advanced nation that has mastered quantum computing.

In it, a Royal Marine recalls defending a “Margate kind of place” from a technologically superior enemy that scrambles the headsets and drones used by British forces, resulting in the “loss of quantum advantage”.

A third story depicts a Silicon Valley tech boss who refuses to end an ongoing war unless a government minister hands over the personal data of billions of people to train his company’s AI systems.

The tech executive character says: “Out of this horror, this atrocity that

‘Similar projects in the past have inspired inventions from cell phones and credit cards to driverless vehicles’

started over a few rocky islands’ GPS coordinates, we are focused on something that actually matters now, in this century… And you should be too.

“They spent decades gathering that data, tapping every sensor possible – traffic cams, heart monitors, credit systems, hacks of all our networks, all to empower, all to control not just their own populations but ours.”

The nightmarish scenarios were dreamt up by authors Peter Singer and August Cole.

The two co-authored a 2015 novel named Ghost Fleet. In the book, China and Russia join forces to invade the US in a dystopian future where Scottish nationalists have succeeded in breaking up the UK, leaving the country divided and unable to help its long-standing ally.

The Government said: “The fictional tales aim to spark discussion and creative insight which might challenge established thought.”