Leaked Video Shows Pentagon Preparing For Dystopian Future Combat In Megacities

In the future, there will only be an endless war fought in congested megacities ruled by gangs of criminals connected by ruthless hackers intent on exploiting the growing divide between rich and poor.

It sounds the plot of a dystopian science fiction movie, but it’s actually the backdrop of a future war the Pentagon has ordered the army to prepare for.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept obtained a video shown at the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) as part of a course dubbed Advanced Special Operations Combating Terrorism.

“Our current and past strategies can no longer hold. We are facing environments that the masters of warfare never foresaw.”

The five-minute video, titled “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” describes a dark future when the Earth has been ravaged by the effects of global warming, and 60 percent of the population lives in giant cities.

The dystopian video features an ominous-sounding narrator backed by melancholy music and distressing images. It may describe a bleak future, but it deals with problems Congress won’t admit exist.

By the 2030s, urban areas in the developing world will grow in population by 1.4 billion. The super rich will live in high rises next to tent cities, and more than half the population will be teenagers under the age of 18, according to the video.

Inhabitants of the far-flung megacities will live in cottages, high rises, and underground habitats. Each will be governed by its own set of laws and customs lead by organized gangs who rule with an iron fist.

“Concentrations of high tech transportation and globally connected seaports, contemporary water, utilities, and waste disposal intermixed with open landfills, overburdened sewers water and makeshift power grids.”

Lessons from the World’s Largest Megacity?
How to confront the challenges facing China’s ?Pearl River Delta… https://t.co/mZsEWQOH7v

— There is No Planet B (@Geog1stInSpace) October 29, 2016

Facing a bleak future with no employment prospects in a world where historical traditions clash with modern life, religious and ethnic tensions will boil to the surface, and the chaos will give rise to terror groups and organized crime.

The digital world will behave like the hacker group Anonymous and become a playground for revolutionary and criminal forces hiding in anonymity.

“This is our future. It is one we are not effectively prepared to operate in, and it is unavoidable.”

When the inevitable finally happens, and the U.S. Army is forced to do battle inside one of these megacities, there are two solutions offered by common military wisdom.

The choice will be to either avoid the cities entirely or empty them of noncombatants and defeat the militants left behind in high-intensity warfare. The problem, however, is one of numbers. In a city of 10 million people, when the army has the cooperation of 99 percent of the population, that still means they must defeat 100,000 enemy fighters.

“Urban conflict is written deep into the Army’s histories, but in tomorrow’s conflict these megacities are orders of magnitude greater in complexity.”

The video calls on the military leaders of today to redefine the doctrine of warfare and the military force structure of tomorrow to achieve victory in the dystopian future,where there is only endless war.

“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.”

What makes this video strange is that the Pentagon is preparing for a future world devastated by climate change, the economic divide between rich and poor, and economic catastrophe. These are all things Congress has refused to admit actually exist.

In 2014, Congress actually passed a bill prohibiting the U.S. armed forces from responding to the effects of climate change. The Republican-controlled House refused to let the military respond to the threat rising sea water posed to American Navy bases, according to Gizmodo.

“Why should Congress divert funds from the mission of our military and national security to support a political ideology.”

What do you think of the megacities portrayed in the Pentagon’s video of a dystopian future?

[Featured Image by Sean Gallup/Getty Images]