TEASER: The Military Needs Gamers

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2020

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Military needs gamers. Over the past few months, the U.S. Army and Navy have spent a considerable amount of time playing video games. The Pentagon is streaming on Twitch, showing up at video game tournaments, and sponsoring esports events. And it’s all in a bid to reach a younger crowd and fill out the ranks. The military is trying to meet young people where they live and, increasingly, they live online playing video games.

Is the military’s use of video games as a recruitment tool crossing the line or business as usual? To help us figure that out, we’ve got two guests today. Both returning champions.

Here to help us untangle this mess is Pauline Kaurin. Kaurin is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the US Naval War College and the author of the new book On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military Citizenry and Community.

We’ve also got Marty Skovlund Jr. Skovlund is a veteran of 1st Ranger Battalion and the Executive Editor of Coffee or Die Magazine.

Recorded 8/28/20
The long weird story of the Military going online
Activists, trolls, and AOC
Why the military is allowed to recruit at high schools
The wild questions you get working as a recruiter
Scumbag recruiters
Military service as a path to a middle class life and education

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Yes, you have to fill the ranks, but if you fill the ranks,
0:20.0	but if you fill the ranks deceptibly, first of all, people are going to stay.
0:23.8	Is your first problem, right?
0:25.7	And second, you may not be getting the people
0:27.7	that you really need.
0:28.7	That's a national security issue there.
0:31.1	And I will tell, just to interrupt,
0:32.4	I will tell you those are both problems that I routinely
0:34.4	brought up and that other recruiters could not care less about because they don't care and that's why
0:40.0	this is an issue for, maybe it's a larger issue for the military profession itself to then say to this community,
0:48.4	just like we're saying to the SEALs or special forces, Yeah, we know that you guys think you can behave like this, but the rest of us are like, no, you can't. And so there may come a conversation where you have to clean house or we have to
1:03.8	reconceptionalize how recruiters engage in their work. Like 2018, the Navy especially the Navy's been more open with about the number, how much money it's spending.
1:17.0	They buy the Super Bowl ad and they do not get the return on it as far as recruiting goes that they had gotten in previous years and they realize, okay, we've got to make some changes, right?
1:29.1	Kids aren't watching sports, not even the Super Bowl like they used to. We're spending all this money
1:34.9	on places in places, you know, like football games and NASCAR and it's just not
1:39.5	bringing us recruits anymore. Where are kids that are all online they start purchasing digital
1:44.6	they start purchasing digital ads on YouTube and all the different branches kind of start
1:49.7	working on getting on Twitch.
1:52.9	And for people in the audience who aren't aware,
1:55.4	Twitch is a service where you are,
1:57.9	where you play video games for an audience online.
	...

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