CIA Pursues Anti-Terrorism Videogame

Thanks to the Washington Times for their story revealing the CIA is developing a videogame aimed at helping its analysts think like terrorists. The agency is working with the Institute Of Creative Technologies, who helped the Army set up development of Full Spectrum Warrior, and according to the article: "The game will select a scenario that could involve analysts playing terrorist-cell leaders or members, a terrorist 'money mover' or a facilitator", or alternatively "a U.S. Customs agent, or even a cooperative or hostile neighbor living next to a terrorist", to help anti-terrorism workers "think outside the box."

Comments

Re:if they need a 'game'...

[Oddly_Drac]

As entertainment, we once created a science-fiction scenario that involved four different groups of people trying to stop a terrorist attack on a space elevator. The (large) group of people was split into four groups; counter-terrorism units, police, corporate sponsors and terrorists...runners were used to take messages between each group and there were GMs available that would release information as and when 'stuff' happened.

Needless to say that it started off in complete chaos, but as people got into the rhythm it was interesting to see the dynamic emerge...

All the hostages died, though.

But this kind of exercise is reliant on technology supplying the answers when they should be geting people to use ingenuity by saying, 'okay, you want to kill hundreds of people. How do you do it?'.