2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II was actually a fairly good game, but it did see Treyarch’s Dave Anthony, who directed the game, leave to pursue what he called some passion projects. And while speculation has been rife as to what these projects might be– movies? Games? TV?- it turns out he was tapped in by the Atlantic Council as a consultant called upon to predict global threats. Seriously.
“Dave excels in imagining future security scenarios that are different from today’s challenges,” Atlantic Council vice president Barry Pavel said in an emailed statement. “The council will harness Dave’s proven world-class talents for imagining new types of threats to strengthen our work on emerging defense challenges, disruptive technologies, and security and defense strategy.”
“When you look at the threat from groups like ISIS, the next threat to America is not that we’re going to get invaded by hundreds of thousands of troops on the mainland,” he told the publication. “It’s that you might have a hundred ISIS troops in your country who simultaneously attack soft targets.”
Well… I guess in a very Michael Bay-ish way, Call of Duty has sort of predicted global threats, I guess? I really don’t know. But it’s still pretty cool, if a little bemusing. If you are more interested in this, make sure to check out the original piece by Foreign Policy here, which was first noticed and picked up on by the fine folks over at Polygon.