This year, the Global Engagement Center, an agency that leads the U.S. State Department’s efforts to counter foreign disinformation, offered a $1 million grant to applicants proposing a video game “that builds cognitive resilience to authoritarianism and promotes democratic norms and values.”
The posting showed just how seriously the U.S. government takes gaming—a $455 billion global industry that, while centered on leisure, has considerable foreign-policy implications. This edition of Flash Points considers where geopolitics and video games intersect and how the industry has become caught in the crossfires of global culture wars.
This year, the Global Engagement Center, an agency that leads the U.S. State Department’s efforts to counter foreign disinformation, offered a $1 million grant to applicants proposing a video game “that builds cognitive resilience to authoritarianism and promotes democratic norms and values.”
The posting showed just how seriously the U.S. government takes gaming—a $455 billion global industry that, while centered on leisure, has considerable foreign-policy implications. This edition of Flash Points considers where geopolitics and video games intersect and how the industry has become caught in the crossfires of global culture wars.
There’s No Dodge Button for Disinformation
The United States is trying to use video games to counter propaganda, Joshua Foust writes.
‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Is Full of Monkey Magic
A blockbuster take on China’s favorite story has become a source of national pride, FP’s James Palmer writes.
How Gamers Eclipsed Spies as an Intelligence Threat
The latest leak has profound implications for counterintelligence, Jonathan Askonas and Renée DiResta write.
Why Is My Video Game Full of Russian Propaganda?
Gamers have become unwitting agents in a global culture war, Joshua Foust writes.
A Shiny (and Wrong) Vision of Roman Imperialism
Expeditions: Rome tries to be accurate, but it’s all surface, Bret Devereaux writes.
The post Why Video Games Matter in Foreign Policy appeared first on Foreign Policy.
