By Claire Bernish

Hell best describes the future of large cities portrayed in a haunting — and rather alarming — Pentagon video obtained by the Intercept.

https://youtu.be/gEPdOZbyzbw

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/

Titled “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” the five-minute video discusses urban warfare in the not-so-distant future, and the imagined difficulties of controlling sprawling populations in the coming utter chaos.

“Megacities are complex systems where people and structures are compressed together in ways that defy both our understanding of city planning and military doctrine,” a stern voice narrates over mildly ominous background music and images of present-day urban blight and violence. “These are the future breeding grounds, incubators, and launching pads for adversaries and hybrid threats.”

According to the Intercept, the video, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, has been shown as part of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) course called “Advanced Special Operations Combating Terrorism,” for its lesson on “The Emerging Terrorism Threat.”

But the terrorists depicted in its footage aren’t the stereotypical religious extremists currently the putative focus of a multi-fronted U.S. military campaign — rather, the Pentagon warns, the enemy will be subversive elements arising amid dwindling resources as the stratification of wealth sharpens in the years to come.

“Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor,” the narrator portends. “Religious and ethnic tensions will be a defining element of the social landscape. Stagnation will coexist with unprecedented development, as impoverishment, slums, and shantytowns rapidly expand alongside modern highrises, technological advances, and ever-increasing levels of prosperity. This is the world of our future — yet it is one we are not effectively prepared to operate within; and it is unavoidable.”

Megacities will host 60 percent of the world’s rapidly expanding population by 2030, the video notes, and urban centers “will be the locus, where drivers of instability will converge” — instability brought by the inability of Earth to support exploding population, as in the lack of fresh water and sanitation, closer proximity of traditionally opposed ideologies, and burgeoning alternative forms of governance necessitated by such cramped living.

Despite these sharply diminishing supplies, rigged electrical grids, and “growing mass of unemployed,” the narrator exhorts, technological advances will continue unabated, furthering the stark contrast between burgeoning alternative societies and — what one must imagine — the elite element looking down on it all.

“Where physical domains can be seen, digital domains will have limitless potential to breed and expand without limit,” the narrator predicts over an image pulled from an Anonymous video. “Digital security and trade will be increasingly threatened by sophisticated illicit economies and decentralized syndicates of crime to give adversaries global reach at an unprecedented level.”