Here is an unpopular opinion -

The unusual and alienating shift in the military recruitment campaign has estranged many in the veteran and serving community with the fresh appeal to groups of individuals normally not associated with military ambition. We have all seen the ‘snowflake’ and ‘binge gamers’ recruitment posters. Of course, they had the desired result of going viral for infamous reasons, but we have no real grounds to suppose that this wasn’t the intended effect. It’s difficult to know whether things like this go viral by accident as a major flaw in not thinking things through, or whether it is cleverly preordained opportunism to ride a wave of outrage to garner attention. These posters and controversial past videos have lit a fuse of annoyance and anger from veterans, Luddites, the conservative military ilk, and people in general.

The posters calling on ’Gamers’ to join the ranks has been met with such contempt and such rage, especially from veterans. How is a frail teenager, who has spent the last three thousand hours of his/her life on a throne of monster energy cans playing the latest racing games, going to possibly elevate the recruitment problem within the military? I was addicted to Doom 2 before basic training, imprisoned at my keyboard with skin transulcant through lake of sunlight. Everybody at one point was not in the military. Everybody has to be trained from scratch.

So, here is what I think the campaign got right with this strange recruitment business.

I have worked on tv shows for McLaren technology who host racing competitions and bring in the best racing gamers on earth. Those who win these competitions go on to join racing programs where they are eased, albeit slowly, into some of the fastest cars on the road and track. Why? Because the user interface and experience in modern-day racing games have become so realistic that the skills these gamers have to win are directly transferable to real life driving and handling of vehicles. It is the same in flight simulators. Not only is the UI and UX of these flying games so deeply realistic, but gamers are employing alternative controls for consoles that are replicas of an aircrafts dash. Some of these kids are flying A10 thunderbolts in dogfights through the night, instead of studying. In today’s and tomorrows world, that is training, it must be. You can control a Reaper drone with an Xbox controller. These ’Gamers’ may already be cognitively and dexterously advanced in piloting aircraft due to enormous amounts of experience in the UI and UX of flight simulators. And as military tech becomes more robotic, more autonomous, sophisticated, driverless, pilotless - where is it best to recruit from and save money on training? Who can you recruit from the street to best to remote control drones, driverless tanks, and aircraft than a serious simulation gamer with thousands of hours of virtual flight and driving time? Contemporary gaming is training potential pilots and drivers for us, in their bedrooms, in their pants. There may be a pool of candidates to recruit from to anticipate the advancements in robotic control.

There is another battlefield than those seen in previous years. The rifle sights have been replaced with phone screens and we are each looking down the barrel of a gun. The ammunition - content. The trigger - the play button. Eyes hooked by thumbnails, ears focused on fast taking and an intention span keen to pay attention because the video is two minutes twenty seconds long. We are blowing our own brains out with social media and the plethora of unchecked and untraceable information that counts as facts to vulnerable eyes and ears. This is a digital war zone for our attention, and it is absolutely not new news to anyone reading this. What is important is how we recruit for this war zone, and how we anticipate future developments in the military machine.

Many of the youth today have gone deeper within the internet due to boredom, excitement and a general interest in the language of computers. They have had the time their parents didn’t to familiarise themselves with this new landscape and move through it with lightning speed.

The horror of seeing ’Snowflakes’ on a recruitment poster has estranged so many. ’Snowflakes’ are prescribed that title mainly because of their views. This is the generation of people who have become overly sensitive, but I will give credit that the young amongst them are actually thinking about the world. This ’Snowflake’ mode of thinking has come about because of the exposure to information about the world, bad and good. No matter what direction it swings, this is intelligence, people should be encouraged to think critically about global affairs. The fighting age youth of WW1 had very little idea of what the trenches held for them when they rushed to follow the parading troops through the streets so they could be part of their ranks. It’s a naivety that will never take place again as long as we have the internet, and that is a fact we have to deal with.

No matter how strange their views, we shouldn’t be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some of these ’snowflakes’ are at university studying very technical subjects. Some may code and hack for fun, surf the dark web, be masters of the incognito and may have figured out a way to remain completely anonymous and aware of all the ways their identity can be revealed as well as the countermeasures to keep it concealed. That is tactical movement in a digital world and is smart behavior for people who have a clandestine agenda to manipulate specific groups of people, intrude, spy, blend in, and cover their trails; these are excellent skills for maintaining digital deep cover. There is a lot of sneering at some of these kids for being weak, unable to hold a rifle steady, scale mountainsides, patrol the IED riddled streets of Helmand; But they may be able to tear a hole in your firewall and release a tapeworm virus into your life and send you into digital meltdown. They can reveal your secrets, hold you hostage digitally and leave you bankrupt. This is what we may be recruiting for, to better understand and counter the threats like this that have rampaged the U.S. To identify it, as well as employ it. We need to counter mass population control through social media, identify content that hypnotizes social groups and trace it to the source, to expose lies and reveal the truth for national health and security. This will be a covert operation. Right now, we need computer literacy more than ever, and I am sure there are units and divisions of new age warfare units in action and on the horizon who’s sole job is to wage digital war with the likes of Russia in the trenches filled with millions of blind and naive profiles.

America has just been through one of the most cunning uses of social engineering espionage that the world has ever seen. It has divided their country, empowered lunatics, completely recalibrated peoples minds, dissolved trade deals, initiated European fratricide, ejected a superpower from climate agreements, nearly dissolved NATO, and has now highjacked lying as a virtue. We are all digesting content tailored to our interests and we don’t know where it has come from, we don’t source check, and no one knows how this is going to turn out because we will watch and believe anything and it is changing our minds against our own establishments, which is both good and bad. Endless memes, fails, political debates, ’how-to’ videos, each with a tidal wave of comments with every kind of opinion to help educate, divide or unite an individual. Amongst this, is the spectre of the enemy. The amount of teenagers and young adults learning code, programming, computer science, deep learning, physics and cutting edge software has widened the technological and intellectual gap between the generations. More of the potentially fighting age youth today are learning the new languages of the digital age, the languages that are going to act as a God when the robots need their algorithms. Some may have blue hair and bizarre tattoos, but the exposure they have had to limitless information in the palm of their hand from such a young age is causing a moral outlook never seen before. But, amongst them are very digitally smart individuals.

The virus and propaganda wars have begun under our noses, technology is evolving at an alarming pace. Warfare has moved from taking lives to changing minds en mass using digital espionage. The Hiroshima of mass control may have already happened and we are living in the fallout. There are more ‘Snowflakes’ and ‘Gamers’ than there are potential special forces candidates out there now. The wars are shifting into the digital zeitgeist, so maybe we should start to look at these generations more seriously. With a lot of lessons in hygiene, fitness, diet and military tactics, maybe we should ask them if they would like to fight for their country.