FicInt

FICINT, an acronym for "Fictional Intelligence", is a writing and communication approach that combines narrative storytelling with nonfiction research to explore and explain future trends, technology, and policy.

FICINT, also sometimes known as "Useful Fiction", is a relatively new concept in the military, defense, and policy communities. Recent publications from these communities indicate its growing use as a tool for creating strategic narratives, envisioning complex issues and technologies, and addressing future challenges. Though FICINT publications overlap with other types of speculative fiction such as science fiction and technothrillers, they differ in their aim, which is to fuse the power of narrative with robust real-world research in direct engagement with the policy community.

August Cole, an author and futurist, first coined the term "FICINT" in 2015 as a neologism to describe the genre of debut novel Ghost Fleet, which he co-authored with Peter W. Singer. In the intelligence community (IC), intelligence-gathering disciplines are generally named by combining the intelligence source medium and "INT"—such as SIGINT (signals intelligence), HUMINT (human intelligence), and OSINT (open-source intelligence). The concept of FICINT builds off of this framework, on the premise that fiction provides another way to collect and synthesize information into more accurate assessments of current and future capabilities. According to the UK Ministry of Defense, the goal of such projects is that "that they are both entertaining and informative."

Characteristics

The US Army Training and Doctrine Command Mad Scientist Laboratory project provides a formal definition of fictional intelligence:

"FICINT, also known as fictional intelligence or "useful fiction," combines extensive research and futures forecasting with worldbuilding and narrative. The finished product involves an engaging and plausible storyline to introduce readers to novel trends and problems."  

The aim of FICINT is to spark discussions, challenge established thought, and provide creative insight into future scenarios. In short, writes the National Defense Magazine, the  goal "is to achieve greater reach and impact of research and analysis through sharing them through the oldest communication technology of all—a story."

A 2020 anthology of fictional intelligence by the Royal Air Force defines the genre:

Ficint (Fik-in’t)

(noun)

Fictional intelligence; useful fiction, a meld of narrative and nonfiction

(See also: speculative fiction)

The Rules of the Real describe five critical characteristics of fictional intelligence:

1. NARRATIVE Realistic narrative, driven by the nonfiction goal. "FicInt should use appropriate facts and research to justify the narrative."
2. RESEARCH Research must be embedded in the story (usually via footnotes).  
3. SETTING The story must take place in a real-world setting.  
4. TECHNOLOGY AKA the "no vaporware" rule. "To ensure that FicInt remains feasible and grounded in legitimate technology, all technology included in the story must be developed or in development.
5. TIMELINE The timeline must be realistic.  

FICINT is not only a form of description or entertainment: unlike traditional forms of speculative fiction, FICINT deliberately engages with the policy community. "Fictional intelligence strives to react and be useful to the policy community, and thus engages with policy experts before, during, and after its development. This engagement may involve commissioned stories, workshops on how to create FICINT, or briefings on the end product." Though necessarily a work of art, FICINT values both form and function. Whether a work of fictional intelligence is directed at policymakers, military leaders, tech executives, or the broader public, its raison d’être is to provide direct value as a tool for analysis, rather than to exist as a purely aesthetic object.

Reports on FICINT for the US Army Training and Doctrine Command and Defense Science Technology Lab of the UK cite three core FICINT attributes:

1. "Understanding:  Narrative effectively packages information the way our brains are designed to absorb it, creating lasting messages.
2. Action:  By connecting information to our emotions, narrative is more likely to promote action.
3. Connection:  People are driven to share narratives, leading the audience of FICINT to become part of its marketing. This virality contributes to the creation of a network of people with increased understanding of potential futures."

Medium

As the name implies, most works of FICINT are literary: novels, short stories, and graphic novels, and edited anthologies—but are not limited to text. As an approach to facilitating dialogue, as well as a literary medium, other forms of art-based engagement, such as visual art, theater, and film, also fall under the FICINT umbrella.

Community & application

Though the Rules of the Real do not preclude its use in other fields, FICINT has been adopted predominantly among military communities, primarily based in the US but also in other English-speaking countries—the United Kingdom and Australia—and non-English speaking countries, such as France. (Though as 21st-century security dynamics grow increasingly multifaceted, other subject areas are emerging, such as the effects of climate change on geopolitical futures.)

Academia & think tanks

In a precursor to the formal FICINT genre, the Atlantic Council announced the Art of Future War project in 2014, overseen by bestselling authors August Cole and Max Brooks. Per its name, the project produced not only short story anthologies such as War Stories from the Future, but also nationwide readings of the Pulitzer-nominated play War Words, and a short film about artificial intelligence and human-machine teaming.

The same year, the Center for International Maritime Security kicked off the first-ever Fiction Week, then known as Future Military Fiction Week. A few years later in 2020, CIMSEC partnered with the US Naval Institute to formalize the contest: three top places were named, and the first-place short story was published in the USNI journal Proceedings and the CIMSEC website. That year, CIMSEC wrote, "the #FICINT never stops." During its lifetime, the project has produced hundreds of FICINT stories, including the 2022 1st-place winner, Bulldogs Away, by Ralph G. Francisco.

A 2021 MITRE whitepaper titled Five by Five: Five Disciplines and Five Strategic Initiatives for the Pentagon in the Digital Age recommended FICINT as a tool for the defense acquisition community.

Military & defense

Elements of all US military branches and several international militaries use FICINT to explore future scenarios. In 2016, the Modern War Institute at West Point began an online series of FICINT publications. The same year, another US Army organization, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command initiative, Mad Scientist Laboratory, started its own fiction contest, and received over 150 submissions from 10 countries in the first round of entries. Its purpose is "to bring people together from scientists to military leaders, engineers to fiction writers to envision the future of warfare to help guide the Army where it needs to go." The Mad Scientist Laboratory has called such work FICINT as far back as 2021.

In 2017, the United States Naval Academy Museum launched NavyCon, a conference series exploring strategy through fiction, in their words: "Your prime source for naval power FICINT and science fiction analysis!". The US Marine Corps Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare published annual anthologies of graphic novellas from 2019 to 2022, titled Destinations Unknown, in collaboration with Ender's Gallery—which it called a "groundbreaking #FICINT initiative." The Joint Special Operations University published The Fourth Age: The Use and Utility of Special Operations Forces in a New Age, which "envisions an alternative take where Special Operations should evolve, one where enablers are more important than operators, where using key technologies is what wins battles, and where it is largely women who are calling the shots."

The Cyberspace Solarium Commission began its 2020 Final Report with a FICINT short story meant to engage with its audience, titled A Warning from Tomorrow.

In 2023, the UK Ministry of Defense Defence Science and Technology Laboratory released the FICINT anthology Stories from Tomorrow: Exploring New Technology through Useful Fiction. The Royal Air Force (RAF) published a series of three FICINT anthologies from 2020 to 2021 titled Stories from the Future, using narrative to depict the future "so you can imagine what life might be like for the future RAF."

Down in Australia, the Australian Defense Force released An Eye for the Storm, another anthology of FICINT on the future of professional military education in Australia. The Perry Group, an elective run by the Australian War College, encourages its students to use fiction as a way to develop ideas about Australian defense strategy.

Private organizations

In 2021, authors Peter W. Singer and August Cole established Useful Fiction LLC, which collaborates with different groups to explore future warfare, technology, and policy through narrative.

Works

FICINT is an evolution of speculative fiction that draws on aspects of several genres including invasion literature, alternate histories, science fiction, and techno-thrillers. The term FICINT is novel, but the concept of using fiction as a tool to analyze information and predict outcomes goes back much further. Fictional intelligence evolves from a rich artistic tradition of creating in order to understand.

Ghost Fleet marks the beginning of FICINT as a discrete genre and communication approach, after author August Cole coined the term in 2015 as a hashtag on Twitter. Cole credits speculative authors such as William Gibson (known as the father of cyberpunk) with his approach to writing works of fictional intelligence. Ghost Fleet gained traction in the military and intelligence communities as a new way to go about understanding global technology and security dynamics. Years later, as several of its predictions came true, news outlets referred back to Ghost Fleet to explain global security risks. The book was subsequently placed on the reading list of organizations ranging from all the US military services to the CIA and Royal Air Force. The US Navy also later named a robotic ship program "Ghost Fleet". This outsized impact helped to spread the idea of rigorously researched works of speculative fiction as a tool in the military and intelligence communities.

The year after the term FICINT was first used, the Marine Corps University Press published the first volume of Science Fiction Futures. In 2018, the United States Naval Institute journal Proceedings published "How We Lost the Great Pacific War", a treatise on a global war in the Pacific to positive reception. Soon thereafter, Middlebury Professor Jeffrey Lewis came out with The 2020 Commission Report On The North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The U.S., a speculative novel, styled as a government report, on the fallout from a hypothetical North Korean nuclear strike against the US. In its review of the book, The Economist writes: "The terrifying thing about "The 2020 Commission Report" is how much of it is real".

Later that year, the Small Wars Journal published "A Memo for the President," by Jim Davitch, who credited Ghost Fleet with his introduction to the FICINT genre.

The following year, Singer and Cole released their second co-written novel Burn-in: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution—of which historian Andrew Liptak writes: "it has a foot firmly planted in reality, while stepping forward in time a bit by extrapolating forward from 2020." The next month, the Army Cyber Institute at West Point published Invisible Force: Information Warfare and the Future of Conflict, a graphic short story anthology that includes an introduction on FICINT by Singer and Cole.

A few months later, the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command released "Island X," which draws inspiration from Ghost Fleet and "How We Lost the Great Pacific War" to envision future maritime conflict.

More recently, Australian commander Mick D. Ryan released White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan in 2023, to critical acclaim in the military and strategy communities, and it was quickly absorbed into the FICINT canon.

That same year, Peter W. Singer submitted the first piece of FICINT testimony to the House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies in "What Would Winning Look Like? A Scenario From The Future."

Several online news sites, such as Defense One, the Naval Institute's Proceedings, and the Marine Corps Gazette, regularly publish FICINT content.

See also

• Military science fiction
• Mundane science fiction
• List of alternate history fiction
• Invasion literature
• Speculative fiction