A team of 10 science-fiction writers and artists have begun another round of envisioning threats to French security in 40 years or so, according to Emmanuel Chiva, director of the French Defense Innovation Agency.

The “Red Team” group, which started in mid-2019, presented its initial results in late 2020. The team set out to imagine the future of piracy, complete with entire pirate nations and rogue ships roaming the seas.

The new slate of 2021 topics is entirely classified, Chiva said at an April 29 online conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “We don’t want to expose our vulnerabilities or give ideas to our opponents,” he said.

The team’s assignment is to envision how society as we know will be organized in the future and by what means adversaries could threaten it, Chiva explained. Analysts will then derive scenarios in an attempt to identify technologies that would allow decision makers to stay ahead of the game.

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The writers and artists are effectively pushing up against the traditional cadre of military officers, armament engineers and scientists, according to Chiva. “The goal of the red team is to scare those people and to be able to make them think about how they could adapt to those emerging threats”.

Read more: Defense News