A routine product announcement for the next instalment of the Call of Duty franchise has triggered an unusual internal review within the Ministry of Defence. The game’s marketing material depicts a full-scale North Korean amphibious assault on the southern coast, a scenario that open-source intelligence analysts now assess as operatively feasible within the next twelve to eighteen months. The Defence Secretary has requested an urgent briefing from the Joint Intelligence Committee on the potential for this fictional scenario to serve as a testbed for adversary information operations.
For those of us who track adversary tactics, the convergence is troubling. Pyongyang has invested heavily in cyber-warfare units capable of weaponising popular culture. A realistic invasion narrative embedded in a game played by millions of young adults in NATO countries normalises the concept of a sudden, successful North Korean offensive. It desensitises the public to the strategic pivot that would be required to counter such an event. More critically, the game’s engine could be used to crowd-source route planning and defence reaction times. Every player death, every failed counter-attack, every logistical bottleneck experienced by the player is a data point that a hostile state actor could harvest to refine their own kinetic plans.
Hardware analysis confirms the concern. The amphibious vessels depicted in the trailer are stylised versions of North Korea’s existing Nampo-class landing craft. The landing zones mirror actual geographic chokepoints along the Han River estuary. The order of battle shown, with massed artillery suppression followed by wave assaults, is doctrinally sound for a force that relies on speed and shock. This is not fantasy. It is a digital rehearsal of a contingency that our own planners have wargamed at the Joint Forces Command.
The intelligence failure here is not in the Ministry’s detection of the risk but in its reactive posture. Why was this game’s development not monitored from the outset? We have signals intelligence units that track financial flows and diplomatic cables, yet we missed a multi-million dollar licensing deal between Activision and a shell company linked to a North Korean propaganda bureau. The trail of shell companies, server locations, and AI-generated voice actors all point to a single conclusion: this is a hostile information operation disguised as commercial entertainment.
The cyber security implications are immediate. Players who download mods or connect to unsecured servers could expose their systems to state-sponsored malware. The game’s anti-cheat software, if reverse-engineered, could provide a backdoor into military personnel’s personal devices. We should expect a spike in targeted spear-phishing campaigns using in-game chat functions. The Ministry must issue a secure communications directive for all service members who own the game, and the National Cyber Security Centre needs to place the game’s online infrastructure under active surveillance.
Strategic pivot is required. The government cannot ban the game without validating the adversary’s narrative. Instead, it should embed disinformation within the game: alter player experiences through server-side patches that make the invasion scenario fail more often, or inject false logistical data that leads enemy planners astray. The Ministry of Defence should also expedite its own unannounced games, using licensed engines to train reservists in anti-amphibious operations. This is a new domain of hybrid warfare, and we are already late to the battlefield.
The next twelve months will determine whether this was a benign marketing stunt or the opening move in a coordinated campaign to condition the public and our armed forces for a real North Korean thrust. The indicators are red. The responsibility is ours.
