From MATRIX2:
The ability to create photorealistic virtual human beings raises unsettling questions, especially in conjunction with the means to cut-and-paste them into any landscape. These questions troubled Gaeta himself so much that, a few years ago, he wrote a letter alerting President Clinton to the fact that such technology could be used for purposes of mass deception. (The letter was never answered.)
As it happens, one group deeply interested in the new breed of hyperrealistic CG is the military. Darpa is fast-tracking image-based rendering and lighting for use in immersive battle simulations. In 1999, the US Army launched the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, where Paul Debevec – Borshukov’s former mentor at Berkeley – is now the head of graphics R&D.
Gaeta recognizes the paradox. “You have these paranoid films about the Matrix depicting how people are put in a mental prison by misusing this technology, and you have the military constructing something like the actual Matrix. Or maybe our technology will become the actual Matrix, and we have inadvertently spilled the vial of green shit out onto the planet.”