Author Description

In the Mojave Desert, off the shores of San Francisco Bay, in the hills of southern Germany, next door to Disneyworld and in the heart of Hollywood, the United States armed forces are preparing for the next war. They are fought by the military in the same manner as they are viewed by citizens, on real-time networks and by live-feed videos, on the PC and the TV, actually and virtually. Enabled by smart technologies yet constrained by political and humanitarian imperatives, a new form of high-tech, low-risk warfare is emerging, Virtuous War. In Virtuous War, James Der Derian takes the reader on a roadtrip through the future of war, where cyborg combat technologies, video games, TV news stories, Army training exercises, and Hollywood movies all blur and converge in a new military-industrial-media-entertainment network. He shows us a world in which CNN and Disney are as much a part of the battlefield as Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon, where Marine fire-teams train with the video game “Doom”, and entertainment executives design Army wargames. All the while Der Derian offers tremendous insight on the questions that arise as the tail of technology wags the dog of war: Will killing become easier? Will peace become harder? Will war lose its place as the ultimate reality-check of international politics? The result is the first book to offer a “virtual theory” for the military strategies, philosophical questions, ethical issues, and political controversies surrounding the future of war and peace.