Transformation of Social Relations Through Military Incentives
The documentary Full Battle Rattle (2008) tells the story of the fake Iraqi village of Medina Wasl, created by the US Army, in California’s Mojave Desert. Participating in a three-week program in Medina Wasl is a final, necessary part of training for soldiers before combat in Iraq. Within this fake space, hundreds of Iraqi role-players adopt new identities and create social relations with others. In a sense, they are immaterial laborers as the product of their work results in “knowledge” or “information” that ultimately aids the US military (Dyer-Witheford, 2009, 4). Taken together with the physical environment that so highly resembles the real Iraq, the social forces produced by the interaction of these characters forms the social machine. Within this machine, powerful social relations are facilitated in a socially immersive environment, which can produce palpable effects in the real world. In the assemblage, the soldiers become pulled into the fake reality of the simulated space even though they know they are not actually in Iraq. They become lost in the scenarios within the social virtual space. There is something about the virtual space that overpowers the real within the simulation of the real, which is able to produce meaningful consequences in the real world. For example, the soldiers witnessed simulated injuries that were inspired by grotesque injuries from combat in real life, and threw up because the injuries looked so realistic. Indeed, the simulation had the power to induce real effects on the body due to the social forces and interactions working within the physical space.
In recent years, the US military’s use of armed drones has and will continue to aid military knowledge and tactics as an unprecedented warfare technology. Without having to physically be present in the war zone, drone pilots are alienated from their work as they do not fully experience or feel the effects of their labor. The social input that pilots infuse into the technical war machine of the drone works not to facilitate social relations, but to undermine them. Specifically, these social relations are undermined when the armed drones succeed in killing people, as the social relations those people have formed and fostered are completely severed. In an article by The Intercept, former Air Force Staff Sgt. Brandon Bryant notes how killing “someone’s father, uncle, or brother who had nothing to do with anything” would cause their families “to want revenge” (2015). By killing these people, and thereby severing their relationships with others, families would naturally seek retaliation for their loss. In addition, unlike the simulated space of Medina Wasl, the drone pilots do not experience a full-body immersion when they go to combat. They often speak of living in different realities, one in which they go home to their families and another in which they are at war, through which the idea of haunting emerges, as Sarah's page describes in depth. When the drone pilots go to combat, it almost feels like a game. In this way, their social input manifests in a virtual space despite inducing tangible, observable effects in the real world.
Note: Social input into the technical machine, which creates the social machine, can also transform social relations through virtual play and the fleshy machine.
Citations
Full Battle Rattle (2008).
Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Games of Empires (2009).
Hussain, Murtaza. "Former Drone Operators Say They Were 'Horrified' By Cruelty Of Assassination Program." The Intercept (2015).
Link: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-were-horrified-by-cruelty-of-assassination-program/