Module overview
This special subject explores the development of the ‘precision ethos’ across the American military, and its representation within political rhetoric, cable news and print media, legal architecture, films, video games, and social media posts. Following the advent of airpower during WWI, strategists shared apocalyptic visions of bombers obliterating civilians as the traditional front lines of warfare were dissolved by verticality. Contra to this, a cadre of American strategists proposed an alternative vision — a precision ethos — through which a fusion of superior technology, intelligence, and training would bring military victory while sparing civilians and their environments.
Part II explores the evolution of the precision ethos in the twenty-first century through the conflicts broadly labelled as the War on Terror. It considers how the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq challenged the precision ethos, raising debates about the strategic, political and legal requirements of balancing risk to combatants and civilians. It explores how the technology gave rise to a new phenomenon – the targeted killing of terrorists — which was accompanied by a special form of presidential media performance, and how the evolution of video game technology gave players the opportunity to engage in their own precision strikes against other online players, gamifying the precision ethos and embedding its tenets into a new generation of citizens.