First Platoon

From the author of NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO and BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, a powerful story of war in our time, love of country, the experience of tragedy, and a platoon at the center of it all.

This story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly nineteen-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that will change all their lives. But their part of the story folds into the next: linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the U.S. Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world.

First Platoon is an American saga of technology and war that illuminates a transformation of society. It is about identity in the age of identification. About humanity in the age of biometrics, iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more. And about the power of point of view in a burgeoning surveillance state.

Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. First Platoon reveals a post–9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. A Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars. And a people at its mercy, in its last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.