The sentiment of a population never seems more vulnerable than in the days following a terrorist attack.

By definition, terrorism strikes at the heart of people’s sense of security. The recent Boston Marathon bombings once again created a fierce public debate on what could have been done ― and what must be done ― to prevent such incidents. 

“In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing,” the conservative critic Rachel Marsden writes in a recent column, “it’s only natural to ask why some terrorists are only caught after they’ve inflicted carnage on innocent civilians. What went wrong?”

Marsden helpfully provides five reasons: understatement of the terror threat, moronic people who believe in crazy government conspiracy plots, a culture of complacency, superficial values like “diversity” ― and finally the lack of understanding of terrorists.

Persuasive as these reasons might appear to some ― to others, of course, altogether perplexing ― it is hard to avoid the impression that, from a wider perspective, the list is somewhat arbitrary, random, perhaps even meaningless, and that one easily could have come up with additional or very different reasons. For example, a misunderstanding of terrorism and the underlying motives, a lack of criticism of government activities, as well as a culture of intolerance.

In this sense, Marsden’s piece is symptomatic of an ethos that has informed much of the public debate on terrorism in recent times ― one that responds to terror incidents via a hubristic preemptive logic formulating a political imperative according to which the future course of the world appears in front of us like an already written script.

The preemptive logic always seems most convincing in the wake of an atrocious event; when things have already happened, when the nightmare has come true. The Bush administration’s controversial reasons behind the preemptive war against Iraq in 2003 would almost certainly not have gained momentum without the political sentiment created by the 9/11 terror attacks.

As the columnist Peter Hetherington clarifies, the purpose of preemptive logic is “to eliminate a threat before it materializes” ― a justified means of using a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil from happening. However, as the subsequent failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction illustrates, it is a potentially perilous strategy. For underneath the preemptive logic, persuasive as it might seem in the wake of a terror attack, there is the philosophical issue of preparing oneself for ― perhaps even protecting oneself from ― the radical contingency, the unpredictability, of the future.

Perhaps this is why the theme of preemptive logic often appears in science fiction films. Sci-fi is par excellence the genre which most literally deals with the philosophical problem of preemptive logic ― an attempt to solve the inherent belatedness of the event; our desire to undo the event, to prevent that which has already occurred. In the sci-fi film, we are projected into a future stage of world history at which point the event ― i.e. our present ― has already happened; thus, the genre often takes on a didactic dimension, a warning of what may happen to us if we do not change our course now.

Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” (2002) is one of the most literal sci-fi treatments of the theme of preemptive logic. Set in Washington D.C., 2054, the film tells the story of Police Chief John Anderton, leader of a “pre-crime” squad. Anderton’s team acts on intelligence produced by three strange beings with psychic abilities ― the pre-cogs ― who can predict murderous intentions in people. Since the pre-crime squad is able to arrest and detain people before they actually commit murder, Washington D.C. has become a safe and murder-free zone.

The film’s underlying premise articulates a hypothetical consequence of the present discussion on preemptive logic. At present, that is, the means by which we legitimize and support preemptive arguments and actions are still largely flawed, somewhat random and arbitrary, and ultimately prone to human errors, fear, prejudice, ignorance, and ideology. After every terror attack, the free world asks itself: what could we have done to prevent this particular incident from happening? Rachel Marsden’s list is as good as any ― perhaps a few practical measures, doing things better, more control and discipline; but one should add here that no action or measure would guarantee anything remotely resembling absolute future security.

“Minority Report,” on the other hand, articulates precisely such a future scenario in which preemptive logic has potentially found its full and complete expression ― where the absolute predictability of the course of the world has finally materialized into a concrete guarantee of security. Insofar as the full potential of preemptive logic is realizable, the film asks, who would not support such a world ― a world without evil?

Police chief John Anderton joined the pre-crime squad after his son was kidnapped and possibly murdered ― that is, because he wanted to prevent such an incident from happening to other people in the future. Traumatized by the past (e.g. he compulsively watches old video clips of his son, while taking drugs ― further sign of his un-freedom), Anderton wants to cancel out the future itself by investing all his faith in the pre-cogs’ abilities to predict the future actions of people ― until the precogs name him as the next killer.

At this point, he becomes a staunch adherent of free will. The uncomfortable premise here is that insofar as we accept the idea of an absolutely predictable world, the idea of free will must likewise be abandoned.

While the film in this sense raises traditional questions of free will and determinism, Minority Report’s ideological blind spot is precisely that it refuses to answer this question, the uncomfortable premise ― absolute security at the expense of free will. The film’s title refers to a file that occurs every time the pre-cogs disagree on the outcome of a future event. Anderton, convinced that he will not commit murder, desperately goes in search of his minority report; but there is none, and Anderton does indeed end up (albeit accidentally) killing the predicted victim.

However, Anderton eventually discovers that he was set up by the main architect of the pre-crime program, Lamar Burgess, who wanted to use Anderton’s crime to cover up an earlier murder. As it turns out, the film thus suggests, the pre-cog system was not perfect after all, but prone to human errors and moral shortcomings. What “Minority Report” cannot or refuses to answer is precisely the question it originally asked us ― namely, who would not support a fully realized preemptive system guaranteeing total security, a world without evil, even if it means the suspension of free will, and ultimately the future as such.

That “Minority Report” cannot answer this question perhaps testifies to a general unwillingness to think through the consequences underlying the present debate on preemptive logic. Insecurity creates a desire for a deterministic world in which dangers and threats may be eliminated in advance.

Terror, on the other hand, is precisely that which feeds on this desire ― a world caught in a moment of un-preparedness and unpredictability. The solution here ― as “Minority Report” indirectly illustrates by refusing to go along with it ― is arguably not the hypothetical consequence of a preemptive logic, a totally deterministic world at the expense of liberty and free will.

If anything, the film suggests, terror always seems one step ahead precisely because there exists a script (this is why Burgess could set up Anderton in the first place). The politics of preemptive logic operates with a potential future scenario of world history, like an already written script ― readable by everyone, terrorists as well as non-terrorists. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.