From France24, June 6:
As parliament gears up for a vote Wednesday on plans to boost military spending, the French Armed Forces look set to continue hiring science fiction authors to imagine future threats to national security. So far, sci-fi novelists from the Red Team Defense project have written more than a dozen stories and published two books dealing with warfare based on mass disinformation, bioterrorism and a pirate nation – and even President Emmanuel Macron is reading them.
"Chronicle of a Cultural Death Foretold" is set in the near future. The Armed Forces need to evacuate French and European citizens from Grande-City after rumours spread of a biological attack on high schools. The pathogen is a type of coronavirus that causes severe respiratory problems and sepsis.
But the soldiers face a challenge they couldn't have seen coming. In this sci-fi world, citizens have divided themselves into communities, or 'safe spheres', based on what they want to see, hear and believe.
"You have communities structured around a deliberate refusal to see certain parts of reality, to the point where if you refuse to see something, it no longer exists for you," explains Virginie Tournay, who co-wrote the story. "Vegans can choose not to see plates with meat on them, or even butcher shops in the street."
It's the perfect terrain for the enemy to carry out a mass disinformation campaign. Bombarded by fake news, some safe spheres start to distrust the Armed Forces' evacuation efforts. The French soldiers are disoriented, and their internal cohesion begins to break down.
"Today, fake news is everywhere. The fact that there are groups who adhere to fake news is a reality," says Virginie Tournay. "But up until now we hadn't pushed the issue to the extreme, whereby there are communities structured around alternative realities based not just on fake news, but on personal preferences. Here, reality and virtual reality are completely confused."
Sci-fi and France’s next military budget....
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