Ghost Fleet's Fiction Aims to Shape Minds on Future Wars

Credit: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Science fiction books such as "Ender's Game" and "Starship Troopers" have featured on the reading lists of various U.S. military branches for years. Such books provide timeless examples of leadership and reflections upon warrior culture, even if they don't necessarily aim to predict exactly how future technologies will help humanity defeat alien invaders. But sometimes a work of fiction aims to change the way that military commanders, politicians, and technologists think about the wars of the near future. The new techno-thriller novel "Ghost Fleet" envisions how World War III might play out between the U.S., China and Russia based upon real technologies and weapons currently in development. It considers what might happen when China's military-backed hackers attack the Pentagon's computer networks, or how the U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would perform in a dogfight with its Chinese and Russian military jet counterparts. Newer technologies such as laser weapons and 3D printing also appear in the book's pages. But just as importantly, "Ghost Fleet" uses the allure of a fictional story to draw in readers who might otherwise not bother reading a non-fiction book about how technologies will alter the battlefields of future wars. "We’ve seen time and again that fiction has changed the real world," said Peter Singer, coauthor of "Ghost Fleet" and a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation. "Sometimes it inspires new ideas. Other times it warns of things, helps us heads off dangers and better prepares us for the future." Singer has already written several non-fiction books about how military drones and cybersecurity issues have begun transforming warfare. But he has also done consulting work for Hollywood films and military-themed video games such as the popular "Call of Duty" series. His soft spot for fiction and admiration for past techno-thriller writers—notably Tom Clancy—inspired him to try channeling his expertise into a fictional framework. To write "Ghost Fleet," Singer teamed up with August Cole, a writer, analyst and former journalist covering the defense industry for the Wall Street Journal.