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Pentagon Strategy, Hollywood, and Technowar

WITH THE GROWTH of U.S. imperial power and its military reach, warfare today extends across the cultural as well as the institutional and battlefield terrains, the result of great technological changes now altering the very character of modern combat. Expanded military influence within the corporate media and popular culture is an inevitable outgrowth of the largest war machine the world has ever seen.

‘Operation Hollywood’ and ‘Hollywood and the Pentagon’

If you think of propaganda Lassie is not the first thing that springs to mind. Nevertheless, over the years, Lassie and hundreds of other TV shows and movies have been made with assistance and/or script ‘advice’ from the US government.

These two documentaries chart the history of collaboration and look into some of the current projects that involve Hollywood people and the pentagon. Both documentaries follow the same basic narrative… In the late 1920’s the US War Department (they used to be so much more honest when naming things) created an office to act as a bridge between the film industry and the army. Relations were, for the most part good before and after WW2 but a spate of films critical of the Vietnam War strained the relationship. After ‘Top Gun’ relations began to improve.

Last but not least:

Army, USC Join Forces for Virtual Research

August 18, 1999

By Karen Kaplan

Setting the stage for an unprecedented collaboration between the Pentagon and Hollywood, the U.S. Army today will announce the formation of a major research center at USC to develop core technologies that are critical to both the military and to the entertainment industry.

The primary goal of the new Institute for Creative Technologies is to allow the Army to create highly realistic training simulations that rely on advances in virtual reality, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies. The entertainment industry is expected to use the technology to improve its motion picture special effects, make video games more realistic and create new simulation attractions for virtual reality arcades.

"It's a marriage made in heaven," said Anita Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Virginia who first proposed that the military and Hollywood jointly develop key technologies in the mid-1990s when she served as the Defense Department's director of defense research and engineering.

The Army will spend $45 million on the institute during its first five years, making it the largest research project at USC. Entertainment companies are expected to contribute not only money but also their know-how in everything from computer special effects to storytelling. Altogether, the center could raise enough funds from entertainment companies and government sources to nearly double its budget. The institute could employ more than 200 researchers by the time it is 5 years old, said Cornelius Sullivan, USC's vice provost for research. [...]

When Paramount began working with the Defense Department in 1996 on a project in which military officers made national security decisions based on simulated briefings, it took a full year for each side to understand the other, said Richard Lindheim, executive vice president of Paramount Television Group in Los Angeles.

But now Lindheim said he is looking forward to expanding his partnership with the military through the new center.

"It allows us to do research and development, which is not something a Hollywood studio is generally involved in," he said.

John Pike, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, praised the Army's approach to leveraging technology from private industry.

"The fact that our soldiers are well-trained is one of the key edges that the American military has," Pike said. "Anything they can do to sustain that edge is a good thing, and anything that they can do to train inexpensively using simulations rather than having to train expensively by being out in the field using up gas and ammo is a good thing."

Though the $45-million commitment is big money for USC, "it's peanuts for the Army," said Michael Zyda, a professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. If the institute wants to attract key talent from Hollywood--where $45 million is less than the average cost of a studio movie--then "I think the Army needs to boost it up," he said.

The center will draw heavily on the expertise of USC's School of Engineering, which operates the Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey and houses the Integrated Media Systems Center, the National Science Foundation's research center for multimedia. The School of Cinema-Television will participate directly and through its Entertainment Technology Center, which will serve as a liaison to the Hollywood community. The Annenberg School for Communication will also play a significant role.

Some of the core technology the Institute for Creative Technologies will develop:

* Artificial intelligence to create digital characters for military simulations that respond to situations like real people.
* Computer networks that can run simulations with hundreds--or even thousands--of participants who are spread around the globe.
* Technologies to create immersive environments for simulations, ranging from better head-mounted displays to force-feedback devices to surround-sound audio systems.