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Fall Of America: Pentagon Held War Game For Military Response To Gen Z’s Rebellion Against Inequality And The Rigged System

Fall Of America: Pentagon Held War Game For Military Response To Gen Z’s Rebellion Against Inequality And The Rigged System

rebellion
The Pentagon anticipated and prepared in 2018 for a scenario in which members of Gen Z — people born after 1996 — rose up in a “Zbellion.” Protesters rally before Philadelphia Police officers and Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers on June 1, 2020, in Philadelphia, over the death of George Floyd. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

The Pentagon anticipated and prepared in 2018 for a scenario in which members of Generation Z — people born after 1996 — rose up in a “Zbellion.”

The Zbellion was a small part of the 2018 Pentagon war game, called the Joint Land, Air and Sea Strategic Special Program, or JLASS, which also included scenarios involving ISIS successors, anti-capitalist extremists and Islamist militants in Africa, The Intercept reported.

The intention was for the war game “to reflect a plausible depiction of major trends and influences in the world regions,” according to 200-plus pages of documents. Students and faculty from the U.S. military’s war colleges — considered training grounds for the next generals and admirals — conducted the war game.

The war-game scenario depicted Zbellion Gen Z participants as people “psychologically scarred in their youth by 9/11 and the Great Recession, crushed by college debt, and disenchanted with their employment options.” They were young adults who had lost hope for a good life, didn’t believe in the American dream and thought the system was rigged against them. They saw themselves as agents for social change, wanted to help “move the world forward,” and preferred person-to-person contact rather than online interaction despite being tech-savvy. They described themselves as being involved in their virtual and physical communities and rejected excessive consumerism, according to the war game scenario.

In the real world, President Donald Trump has been criticized for threatening to use active-duty military personnel to forcefully suppress mostly-peaceful protesters demonstrating against the murder of George Floyd while in police custody.

“Trump sees no constraint on his authority to use what he calls the ‘unlimited power’ of the military even against U.S. citizens if he believes it necessary,” Robert Burns reported for Associated Press. “Military leaders generally take a far different view. They believe that active-duty troops, trained to hunt and kill an enemy, should be used to enforce the law only in the most extreme emergency, such as an attempted actual rebellion.”

Trump accused U.S. governors of a “weak” response to protests over racism and police brutality. Last week, he demanded 10,000 federal troops go to Washington, D.C., according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Defense Secretary Mark Esper argued against it.

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Trump put Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “in charge” and security forces drove protesters and clergy from Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square with tear gas. Then Milley, dressed in combat fatigues, followed Trump, Attorney General William Barr, Esper, and others to a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Retired admirals and generals lambasted Trump for breaking long-standing norms in civilian-military relations.

“It’s worth considering how the Pentagon’s war gamers chose to focus the military’s attention on a generation now demonstrating peacefully in America’s streets,” Nick Turse wrote for The Intercept.