The Pentagon Envisions a Dystopian Metropolis of the Future

After spending nearly a decade fighting in urban terrain in Iraq and clandestine counter-terror operations around the globe under the auspices of the Global War on Terror, the Pentagon seems to view our urban combat of the future as very ominous indeed. The details of these challenges–and this gloomy vision of the future–are featured in a downright depressing video named  “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity” that has been shown at the Joint Special Operations University.

The video was obtained via a FOIA request by The Intercept. In it, visuals of crowded urban sprawl, riots, poverty and military operations are splashed across the screen as a narrator somberly describes a hugely complex and tactically bankrupt combat environment of the future.

The Intercepts describes the video and its intended use:

The video was used as part of an “Advanced Special Operations Combating Terrorism” course offered at JSOU earlier this year, for a lesson on “The Emerging Terrorism Threat.” JSOU is operated by U.S. Special Operations Command, the umbrella organization for America’s most elite troops. JSOU describes itself as geared toward preparing special operations forces “to shape the future strategic environment by providing specialized joint professional military education, developing SOF specific undergraduate and graduate level academic programs and by fostering special operations research.”

Megacities are, by definition, urban areas with a population of 10 million or more, and they have been a recent source of worry and research for the U.S. military. A 2014 Army report, titled “Megacities and the United States Army,” warned that “the Army is currently unprepared. Although the Army has a long history of urban fighting, it has never dealt with an environment so complex and beyond the scope of its resources.” A separate Army study published this year bemoans the fact that the “U.S. Army is incapable of operating within the megacity.”

Here is the video in its entirety:

The piece goes on to describe megacities in great detail, including the unique and complex social structures that will propagate from high-rise penthouse dwellers all the way down to “subterranean labyrinths” governed by their own laws and social norms. Above all else, the video makes it clear that future cities will be breeding grounds for organized crime, cyber crime and terrorism. And apparently Special Operations Command doesn’t think it’s ready to do battle in the megacities of the future, with the narrator stating:

“Even our counterinsurgency doctrine, honed in the cities of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, is inadequate to address the sheer scale of population in the future urban reality… We are facing environments that the masters of war never foresaw… We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways.”

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