Imagine a life of virtual reality -- a childhood contained in a controlled environment, with no human contact or experiences outside of the world of computer-generated images. Corgan has been genetically engineered by the Federation for quick reflexes, high intelligence, and physical superiority. Everything Corgan is, everything he has ever seen or done, was to prepare him for one moment: a bloodless, computer-controlled virtual war. When Corgan meets his two fellow warriors, he begins to question the Federation. Now Corgan must decide where his loyalties lie, what he's willing to fight for, and exactly what he wants in return. His decisions will affect not only these three virtual warriors, but all the people left on earth.

"Virtual War" describes the latest phase in modern combat: war fought by remote control. Kosovo was such a virtual war, a war in which US and NATO forces did the fighting but only Kosovars and Serbs did the dying. Ignatieff raises the troubling possibility that virtual wars, so much easier to fight, could become the way superpowers impose their will in the century ahead.

Rarely do academics and policymakers have the opportunity to sit down together and contemplate the broadest consequences of war. Our comprehension has traditionally been limited to war’s causes, execution, promotion, opposition, and immediate political and economic ends and aftermath. But just as public health researchers are becoming aware of unexpected, subtle and powerful consequences of human economic action, we are beginning to realize that war has many short- and long-term consequences that we poorly understand but cannot afford to neglect. These papers contribute to a growing discourse among academics, scholars and lawmakers that is questioning and rethinking the nature and purpose of war. By studying the effects of war on communities we can more readily understand and anticipate the consequences of present and future conflicts. Such an understanding might well enable us to plan and execute military action with a more clearly defined set of post-war goals in mind. Whereas traditionally a government at war seeks the defeat of the adversary as its primary and often sole aim, through a clearer understanding of war’s effects other aims will also become prominent. War, like surgery, could gradually become more refined, could minimize damage in ways that are currently unimaginable, and could involve an increasingly heavy responsibility to prepare for and facilitate reconstruction. Projects such as this volume are, of course, only the beginning. The more we understand the evolving nature of war, the better prepared we will be to protect communities from its harmful effects.

Virtuous War is the first book to map the emergence and judge the consequences of a new military-industrial-media-entertainment network. James Der Derian takes the reader from a family history of war and genocide to new virtual battlespaces in the Mojave Desert, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and American universities. He tracks the convergence of cyborg technologies, video games, media spectacles, war movies, and do-good ideologies that produced a chimera of high-tech, low-risk ‘virtuous wars’. In this newly updated edition, he reveals how a misguided faith in virtuous war to right the wrongs of the world instead paved the way for a flawed response to 9/11 and a disastrous war in Iraq. Blinded by virtue, emboldened by technological superiority, seized by a mimetic terror, the US blundered from one foreign fiasco to the next. Taking the long view as well as getting up close to the war machine, Virtuous War provides a compelling alternative to the partisan politics, instant analysis and technical fixes that currently bedevil US national security policy.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews,this book provides an insight into the development of the manosphere, and the extent to which the influence and philosophy of incel is penetrating mainstream culture.

Book 2.

Previously published as "The Revolt" and "The Choice," this bind-up finds the virtual battle spilling into the real world, when Corgan is challenged by Brigand, the product of a clone experiment gone wrong.