The Art of Erik Stell

and yet….

That’s the 100% crackpot theory being investigated by the US military at the moment, as senior officials worry that shifty-looking foreign people are massing on WoW servers to practise unleashing death.

A man called Dr. Dwight Toavs, who is a professor at the US National Defence University, gave a presentation (PowerPoint file here) on how a virtual world might be used to help plan a terror attack by aligning in-game features with real-world places.

That image to the left shows how Dr. Toavs reckons some bearded men in baggy clothing might map the White House over WoW and plan their attack on it in the anonymous safety of the virtual world.

Dr. Toavs then reveals the real reason for the scaremongering – he thinks US agents will have to spend more time immersing themselves in virtual worlds to identify potential threats in the future. He wants to be allowed to play WoW during work time, basically.

Tech Digest: Terrorists planning their next deadly attack using… World of Warcraft?.

I was going to write an entire post satirizing the notion of this scenario.  However, when I started thinking about it, I could not come up with anything.  It’s just entirely too stupid to even comprehend.

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