Did Watch Dogs come true?
Largely, yes. Watch Dogs (2014) has a P(n) of 86% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 0 have arrived and 4 are arriving. Its central premise, 'A single city-wide operating system links cameras, traffic signals, transit, phones and public records, so one network can see and steer a whole city', is partly here. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2030.
Watch Dogs was set so close to its own day that it mostly predicted what was already being built, and it got the ingredients right: a joined-up city, scored citizens, hackable infrastructure. It missed the form. The real systems are a patchwork of vendors and agencies, and the profiling is done by advertisers and police contractors, not by one operating system.
Read the review · 6.9/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
P(n) is the chance that this work's future arrives within 20 years, by 2046. For each prediction we turn our estimate into a probability: arrived is 100%, diverged is 0%, and otherwise the low end of our 80% range counts as a 10% chance, the median year 50% and the high end 90%. Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story, and P(n) is the weighted average. P50 does the same by 2076. P(n), explained.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status · estimate | By 2046 | By 2076 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD-1 | A single city-wide operating system links cameras, traffic signals, transit, phones and public records, so one network can see and steer a whole city. Core premise: ctOS is the game's world and its central mechanic; every hack and every plot turn runs through it. |
5 | ARRIVING 2037 (2030–2055) | 70% | 100% |
| WD-2 | A lone hacker can remotely take over city infrastructure and vehicles, such as traffic lights and cars, from a phone. Major: the player's main verbs are hijacking signals, bridges and cars, and the plot's set pieces depend on them. |
4 | ARRIVING 2032 (2028–2045) | 91% | 100% |
| WD-3 | Police use algorithms to flag individual residents as likely future offenders or victims before any crime occurs. Major: the crime-prediction warnings in ctOS drive Aiden's vigilantism and the game's central question about who is watching whom. |
4 | ARRIVING 2030 (2027–2040) | 96% | 100% |
| WD-4 | Anyone with a phone can look up a stranger's name, job, income and habits from the street, using data the city and companies hold on everyone. Supporting: the profiler is the game's signature interface and sets its tone, but the plot does not turn on it. |
3 | ARRIVING 2031 (2027–2042) | 94% | 100% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 13.8 ÷ 16 = 86% | |||||
| P50 = 16.0 ÷ 16 = 100% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 50%.
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WD-1
A single city-wide operating system links cameras, traffic signals, transit, phones and public records, so one network can see and steer a whole city.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: ctOS is the game's world and its central mechanic; every hack and every plot turn runs through it.
Real cities have centralised camera networks. Chicago's Operation Virtual Shield was reported to link more than 3,000 cameras to a central monitoring system, with facial recognition added. But no city runs cameras, signals, transit and public records as one system. The most ambitious attempt at a fully sensored district, Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs project at Quayside in Toronto, was abandoned in 2020 after privacy objections and, officially, pandemic uncertainty. Procurement is fragmented, so integration is more likely to come as a set of vendor platforms than as one ctOS. The wide range reflects that. 123
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WD-2
A lone hacker can remotely take over city infrastructure and vehicles, such as traffic lights and cars, from a phone.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the player's main verbs are hijacking signals, bridges and cars, and the plot's set pieces depend on them.
Both halves have been demonstrated by researchers. In 2014 a University of Michigan team gained control of nearly 100 wirelessly networked traffic signals, with permission, using a laptop and a radio, and in 2015 two researchers took control of a Jeep Cherokee's steering, brakes and engine over the cellular network. Fiat Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles. What has not been seen is a single person doing this at will across a whole city, and the company said it knew of no real-world case of the Jeep attack. The gap is between a lab demonstration and a repeatable street-level attack, which is why we say ARRIVING and not ARRIVED. 456
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WD-3
Police use algorithms to flag individual residents as likely future offenders or victims before any crime occurs.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the crime-prediction warnings in ctOS drive Aiden's vigilantism and the game's central question about who is watching whom.
It arrived in Chicago itself. The police department's Strategic Subject List, often called the heat list, scored people on their likelihood of involvement in a shooting. A 2016 RAND evaluation found people on it were no more likely to become shooting victims than a comparison group. The department decommissioned the programme on 1 November 2019 after its federal grant ran out, and the city's Inspector General published an advisory in January 2020. The method was tried and discredited in one place, but similar risk scoring is used elsewhere and the pressure to try again continues. We therefore keep the status at ARRIVING with a nearer date than the others. 789
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WD-4
Anyone with a phone can look up a stranger's name, job, income and habits from the street, using data the city and companies hold on everyone.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the profiler is the game's signature interface and sets its tone, but the plot does not turn on it.
The pieces exist but are sold to businesses and agencies, not offered to passers-by. Clearview AI built a database of billions of face images scraped from the internet and sold access to police. A 2022 settlement ended its sales to private companies and individuals in the United States. Data brokers have sold location trails, and in January 2025 the FTC finalised orders barring two of them from selling sensitive location data. The remaining gap is a consumer-grade lookup that works on a stranger's face in seconds, which regulation and platform policy are currently holding back. 101112
- FOR Operation Virtual Shield. Wikipedia. Describes Chicago's camera network, reported as more than 3,000 cameras feeding a centralised system with sensors and facial recognition, funded largely by Homeland Security grants.
- AGAINST Sidewalk Toronto. Wikipedia, 2020-05-07. A sensor-heavy district was announced and then cancelled in May 2020, after criticism of its data collection and governance. The company cited economic uncertainty.
- CONTEXT Researchers Hack Into Michigan’s Traffic Lights. MIT Technology Review, 2014-08-19. Shows how a city's traffic network was in practice a patchwork of separately configured roadside units, not one system.
- FOR Researchers Hack Into Michigan’s Traffic Lights. MIT Technology Review, 2014-08-19. Researchers controlled nearly 100 networked signals, exploiting unencrypted radio links and default passwords.
- FOR Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It. WIRED, 2015-07-21. Two researchers wirelessly took control of a moving Jeep Cherokee, including its brakes and engine.
- AGAINST Update: Chrysler recalls 1.4M vehicles after Jeep hack. Computerworld, 2015-07-24. The vulnerability was patched by recall, and the maker said it had seen no real-world attack. Demonstrations are not yet street-level crime.
- FOR Advisory Concerning the Chicago Police Department's Predictive Risk Models. Office of Inspector General, City of Chicago, 2020-01-23. Confirms the risk-score programme, funded by $3.8 million in federal grants, and that it was decommissioned on 1 November 2019.
- AGAINST Report: CPD's 'Heat List' Unreliable. WBEZ, 2016-08-19. A RAND study found people on the list were no more or less likely to become shooting victims than a control group.
- CONTEXT Incident 433: Chicago Police's Strategic Subject List Reportedly Biased Along Racial Lines. AI Incident Database. Catalogues the list as an AI incident and collects the reporting on its alleged bias.
- FOR Facial recognition company Clearview AI agrees to restrict sale of database in settlement. CBS News, 2022-05-10. Describes a database of billions of face images from social media and the internet, still available to many government agencies.
- FOR FTC Finalizes Orders Against Data Brokers Over Sensitive Location Data. Hunton Andrews Kurth, 2025-01-14. Law-firm summary of final FTC orders against Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla over the sale of location data.
- AGAINST Facial recognition company Clearview AI agrees to restrict sale of database in settlement. CBS News, 2022-05-10. Under the settlement the company stopped selling to private companies and individuals nationwide, which closes off the consumer-grade version.
Ledger updated 5 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method