The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all.

The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down.

The last few years has shown that the world is run by a bunch of jokers, no different than me. That's comforting in some ways, horrifying in others, and sadly has ruined the illusion of some of my favorite movies.

War is probably not possible without propaganda. Wars are strategic, but people generally won't participate in mass killing or property destruction without an (invented or exaggerated) ethical justification.

The most significant cause of global insecurity are myths like good, evil, ethicality and fairness between nations, etc.

My hope is that tracking resources and making them more abundant and distributing first-party true information uniformly might help. But I don't think there will be any "real" global security without a fully integrated political framework.

Selfishness, resource limitations, poorly distributed information about resources, dated technology, racism, and myths like I mentioned above are blockers for integration.

Maybe the crux of it is that war IS the way we do geopolitical integration. If that is the case, then one fantasy alternative might be for the leaders to fight it out instead of whole societies tearing each other apart instead.

Wow that's insane. If China did that same thing today, we would be up in arms.

In the early 90's my moms friend group was passing around this VHS where a guy who claimed to be ex military nervously explained that a lot of hollywood production was the government easing secrets it knew and legally had to disclose to the public so it would put them into hollywood movies. Things like spy stuff or aliens.

I have no idea how I'd ever find the source or original of that. Would be interesting to see if the internet knows.

I've never heard this argument ever for FPS games - the history of the FPS is extremely well documented. The earliest FPS games are frankly far too basic to be of much use for military training.