France lifts lid on future national security threats dreamed up by ‘Red Team’ of sci-fi writers

A RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft

Credit: HANDOUT /AFP

Attacks from floating pirate states and hackers on soldiers with neural implants are just two scenarios dreamed up by a “Red Team” of 10 leading science fiction writers tasked with helping the French army anticipate future threats to national security.

“Astonish us, shake us up, take us out of our habits and comfort zone,” French defence minister Florence Parly told the writers at a “Defence Innovation forum” this month.

Many of the “scenarios of disruption” that they have been asked to imagine to challenge military planners are to remain top secret to avoid giving ideas to potential enemies. They were asked to stick to potential threats between 2030 and 2060.

However, two scenarios have been made public in recent days, along with the identity of some of the writers. Others requested anonymity. 

In one, P-Nation, climate change has led to flooding and swamp-like conditions in many of the world’s coastlines. In France, the northern Dunkirk and Calais area is regularly flooded. Tens of thousands of nationless climate migrants who refuse chip ID implants live in floating “waterlily cities”. 

France has also become the “default gendarme of the Channel” due to a “weakened Britain” and occupied Netherlands.

By 2040, the pirates come together to form a floating plastic continent, dubbed P-nation and two years later launch an attack on Kourou, the current launch zone for the Ariane space rocket in French Guyana, using electromagnetic accelerator guns from mini-submarines.

Pirates also launch an attack with self-regenerating drone swarms that overcome traditional defence systems.

In another scenario called Barbaresques 3.0, hackers break into a French programme that supports wired soldiers with implants called NeTAM, short for military neural interface protocol, which runs on biotechnology developed by Elon Musk. 

During the ensuing battle it is almost impossible to discern hacked units from healthy ones, causing chaos.

When asked whether science fiction writers could “predict the future,” one of the team’s authors, Romain Lucazeau, told Le Point: “No, not at all. Our ability to predict equals zero.”

“That said, I’m convinced that a process in which I listen to people who tell me things that I cannot imagine within the bounds of my work can help me prepare for the unexpected.

“This Red Team initiative goes in the right direction to develop a certain agility and to anticipate a world that has become more and more unexpected since the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

“The year 2020 was a total surprise,” he said.