Dave Anthony, a writer and director on Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops II, was recently invited to join a think-tank forum on the subject of threats to national security in Washington. Anthony gave a presentation which depicted potential future threats (such as a U.S. drone hacked by Iran and a hotel massacre in Las Vegas) and proposed new security measures to prevent such threats.

Anthony predicted that his proposed changes would be met with negativity from US citizens, and advised the US government to do what he did with Call of Duty: market it “to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out.”

During Anthony’s presentation, he told US lawmakers that he sees the biggest threat to national security as coming from within. As such, one of Anthony’s proposed national security plans is to station undercover US soldiers in schools around the country, serving as “School Marshals.” Implementing this, he says, will require an extensive marketing plan.

The threat now, the invasion, comes from within. Imagine the concept of something like a ‘school marshal. Now these guys are U.S. soldiers who are in plainclothes, whose job and part of their responsibility is to protect schools. The public won’t like it, they’ll think it’s a police state. All of these are solvable problems. When we have a new product that has elements that we’re not sure how people will respond to, what do we do as a corporation? We market it, and we market it as much as we can—so that whether people like it or not, we do all the things we can to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out.

— Dave Anthony

It’s a little surprising to see Anthony speak so freely about such a subject, and to use such a negative term to describe his own practices. I don’t intend to get overly political, as that’s not what we’re about here, but I hope the government thinks long and hard before making any decisions based on advice that includes the word “brainwash.”

Source: Business Week

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