CIA Pursues Video Game

How’s the CIA helping its analysts think like terrorists? By spending millions of dollars on a video game.

The agency’s Counter Terrorist Center, or CTC, is working with the Los Angeles-based Institute for Creative Technologies on a project designed to help its analysts, “think outside the box,” a CIA spokesman said. The project is close to approval, but officials wouldn’t comment on the exact cost of the program.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield defended the video project and called it an “innovative approach” to counterterrorism. The game will select a scenario that could involve analysts playing terrorist-cell leaders or members, a terrorist “money mover” or a facilitator, he said.
“For out-of-the-box thinking, we are reaching out to academics, think tanks and external research institutes that are critical in the fight against terrorism,” Mr. Mansfield said. “If it will help us to prevent terrorist attacks, it is worthwhile.”

Once again, true hilarity is to be found only be reading to the end of the story.

Richard Lindheim, the institute’s executive director, said in an interview that the goal of the CIA game project is to train analysts.
“They will put their analysts in analytical specialities in one role or another and then change the roles,” Mr. Lindheim said. “It’s a learning tool.”
He said the institute develops simulations, such as the virtual reality simulator that it installed recently at the Army’s Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
The institute also makes video games.
“We think computer games are a really good way of imparting information,” he said. “We don’t call them games; we call them computer-based training aids.”
A game developed by the institute for the Army, called “Full Spectrum Warrior” and designed to help soldiers conduct peacekeeping operations, has won awards, he added. The institute has also received $45 million from the Army for other projects, including the warrior game.
The Army game involves no shooting, Mr. Lindheim said.
“It’s a decision-making strategy game,” he said. “You never have a gun. What you do is issue orders and see the effect of those orders. That’s the value of it.”
Administration officials said the game is typical of the “politically correct” Army under recently retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki.

Did you catch it? I know it’s hard to find the hilarity in a $45 million dollar contract to develop video games for government employees… but there’s a funny line in there.

The Army game involves no shooting, Mr. Lindheim said.

So we’ve got teenagers running around playing violent video games while we’ve got soldiers playing non-violent games.

Methinks the Pentagon might want to invest in an X-Box or two, and maybe the Department of Education can take the Institute’s $45 million in computer games and put them in the classroom.