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04-05-2017, 01:57 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
In connection with our Supers/Technothriller campaign of Project Jade Serenity, I've been considering what the intelligence services, military establishments and political leadership of other nations would think if they got wind of the experiments that the US Army carried out until the year 2000* in our backstory.
The experiments themselves were relatively tame. I don't expect any nation states will flip out at the news that others are experimenting with nootropic drugs, designer steroids or anything of that nature. And when the project was abandoned, it had not produced any dramatic repeatable successes. On the other hand, in the era in which our play is set, the current time of 2017*, the former test subjects exhibit enhanced performance, major side-effects and even traits that the experiment was never meant to affect. In layman's terms, some of them have superpowers. Here is an attempt at a 'typical' template, but note that most former test subjects will be the lower edge of these, with few of the optional traits. This has been developing over time, with the first indicators of enhanced performance probably becoming evident to the former test subjects themselves around 2005-2007 and with several isolated incidents of individudals exhibiting full-blown superpowers around 2011-2012. Once the situation became evident to the US government, at least one task force had been formed to get a handle on the issue and respond appropriately. This is Onyx Rain, the handlers, watchers and jailers of our PCs in the game. They want to contact all former test subjects, study them and place them under permanent observation until a decision is made about what to do with them. The setting is pretty much unchanged from our world to all appearances. The results of Project Jade Serenity are still highly classified and so far, nothing has leaked to the public, but that could change rapidly in play. What I'm wondering about is who else might have pieced together information on Project Jade Serenity? If one secret government experiment had the effects of giving people superpowers, could others have done the same? What nation states, aside from China and Russia, might be interested enough in the results of Project Jade Serenity to run risky intelligence operations in the Americas? The potential upside would be getting their hands on miracle drugs that not only enhance the effects of military training, but could actually give recruits superhuman abilities. The downside would be an international incident and damaging US relations. If it got out that many, perhaps even most, of the former Project Jade Serenity test subjects were fleeing from the US and were currently in Mexico, what nation states might be intersted in offering them asylum in return for information? *Assuming they ever stopped, but as far as we are aware, there haven't been experiments since then. This could simply mean that whoever was placed in charge of continuing them was better at security than his predecessors. **It was current time when we started. Now we're about Edit: [strikethrough]two months[/strikethrough] a year ahead of the in-game date.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 01-25-2018 at 06:08 PM. |
04-05-2017, 02:08 PM | #2 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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The kind of people who spend a lot of time speculating about security and secret government programs on the Internet (ie. mostly not the people you want to listen to) seem to figure that the US relies on throwing a lot of money at problems ("lets build a giant complex to transcribe and store all telephone calls within the United States, and another giant complex to analyse the contents automtically!"), while other countries may do the same with more cunning and HUMINT. Nobody really knows though! And if they do, they can't provide evidence if they want to live a long life in rooms without bars on the windows. The American intelligence system is so balkanized and lavishly funded that I would not be surprised by anything I heard about it.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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04-05-2017, 02:16 PM | #3 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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I expect there to be a lot of variation among the ca 200 nation states in the world in how much spying they do in the US and Mexico, however. And relative power and wealth is an important variable there, but not the only one. Quote:
But I'm not looking for classified ways and means, at least not currently. I'm mainly looking for thoughts on the strategic goals, international relations and politics involved. For example, Mexico would probably want information that could allow them to enhance the capabilities of selected elite soldiers and police greatly. But would they want it enough to risk an open breach with their much more powerful neighbour, who regardless of current political climate is a huge contributor to Mexico's security? I'd lean toward 'no', there. But that leaves the question open, what nation states would risk an open breach with the US for this prize? In other words, if there are covert operatives from a third (or fourth, fifth, etc.) party operating in Mexico while our PCs are there on behalf of Onyx Rain, what would be plausible nations of origin for them? Does Venuzuela have the capability? What about Guatemala, Honduras or other small nations? Or friendly ones, like El Salvador? They'd probably not risk losing their biggest supporter, even for something like this. What is a plausible political and strategic decision for large and powerful nation states like Argentina or Brazil about something like this? If they had evidence that Project Jade Serenity had actually given test subjects superpowers and they had the chance to obtain cooperate test subjects, what might they do? Would they send covert operatives into Mexico, knowing that there was a very significant chance that they'd have to fight local forces and/or Americans (who might be operating in Mexico without official sanction or who might be there as observers alongside Mexican military units)? Knowing that the US would probably eventually find out who had given the test subjects asylum?
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 04-05-2017 at 02:22 PM. |
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04-05-2017, 02:21 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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And I don't think that punditry is a useful or pleasant activity in any case. Even the people with PhDs and scientific minds (sadly not as large as either group alone) seem to have a low success rate, and finding and identifying their publications is not one of the areas of my expertise.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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04-05-2017, 02:28 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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Surely it cannot be off-topic to discuss whether it would be more plausible for the antagonists* in a GURPS scenario to be covert operatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Russia, Venezuela or somewhere else. Or speculate about the reaction of various nation states to evidence of varying credibility that former test subjects of a US military experiment now have superpowers, whether that reaction involves covert operations, secret diplomacy or even an attempt to publicize the evidence. *Or allies. We haven't really decided that Onyx Rain are necessarily the good guys or even the least bad guys that our characters can associate with. None of which has anything to do with having a personal opinion about the goodness or lack thereof of specific nation states. All countries have good and bad people.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 04-05-2017 at 02:40 PM. |
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04-05-2017, 03:58 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Kentucky, USA
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
Hmm, well, a decade plus incubation period for superpowers kinda shifts the technology (in its current form) out of practical weapons technology. Any war would be long over by the time your super soldiers were ready to fight. My first thought is it would be the sort of thing a country would try to deploy to its general citizenry to have a large pool of recruits in case of future war.
In the case of espionage, there's a lot of flexibility because it was (at the time) a failed program that didn't do anything anyone would flip out over. Any major espionage player could have scooped it up unintentionally after a successful breech, then sold it to a lesser power. "Here's everything we stole from the US DoD in 20xx that we care to sell. Thank you for the briefcase of untraceable cash."
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GURPS Fanzine The Path of Cunning is worth a read. |
04-05-2017, 04:24 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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In terms of China and Russia, I can't recall an incident where their agents were plausibly accused of committing violent crimes in the USA or Mexico. Usually, in public they are accused of stealing private information and of cyberattacks. The Old Country under the Previous Regime was one of the strongest supporters of Another Country, and that did not stop Another Country from forging Old Country passports for agents who murdered someone in Third Country.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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04-05-2017, 04:21 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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Legend was that in the early 1970s the Russians were building a new tank gun. The Western powers wanted to know how big it was. The US intelligence community spent 25 million dollars on a camera so sensitive it could tell the diameter of a gun from low earth orbit. (Remember, $25 million dollars then was real money. Also, this required at least a partial side shot -- or waiting for the Soviet tank in question to elevate its gun barrel sufficiently.) The British intelligence community spent 300,000 pounds on bribing a Soviet official to get the documents with the needed information. The French intelligence community had one of its people take a Soviet officer to lunch and ask him how big the gun was. The Sov told him. Total cost about $35 dollars (again, real money for lunch in the early 1970s.) Who knows? Maybe it's true. |
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04-05-2017, 08:01 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
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04-05-2017, 10:16 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: International Relations and Implications of US Supersoldier Experiments in 2017
Something else to keep in mind is that Realist theory is unrealistic, because it treats nation-states (and other sorts of governments) as monolithic. In fact, they're abstractions. The decisions about your PCs and their fellow 'supers' will be taken by individual humans in high-up, connected places, and will have a lot to do with their political agendas interior to their states, and their personal beliefs and goals and agendas, as well as 'national interest'.
So even if Country D is a small state, with no obvious benefit from being involved in all this and a lot of risk of annoying the Big Boys, their intel people might still get involved, maybe in a serious way, if something about the whole business catches the personal interest of somebody high up in Country D, for whatever reason. So, if your 'story' requires that a small country get mixed in, it's perfectly plausible that it might happen.
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covert ops, jade serenity, supers, supersoldiers |
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