This is "A Modest Proposal" style satire.
Yoking a human brain to perform tasks that only a human can get right, but not having to pay them, a basically get to use them like software.
About the only thing keeping this from becoming a reality is it probably costs more in labor to maintain the bodies than to just have desperate people perform the same tasks for extremely low pay.
Then again, Palmmer's current company builds automated weapons. Imagine a missile guided by an on-board human. Not remote, on-board. The Japanese did manage to employ Kamikaze's but generally it would be pretty hard to source a supply of willing and trained volunteers for that. But you could stick someone in this, run them through training games more or less perpetually, until one day it's not a game and the victim simply does their usual job unaware they are a human bullet this time.
Still probably impractical because of the life support, but maybe not. You don't need any more life support than an ordinary jet fighter for a short one-way trip, and what was impractical yesterday is no longer impractical tomorrow.
It should be thought about, because it can actually be done roght now, which means someone somewhere will do it, or already has.
You should think about solving these problems in the real world, not a fantasy cyberpunk dystopia.
They've been used repeatedly in real life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Douglas_Wells is probably the most famous example, but they've been used even more recently by ISIS
I feel like that's the most common time for you to satire a culture. You know all the intimate details.
In this particular case, it's specifically designed to make you VERY uncomfortable, to show what could be if we're not vigilant. Pushing it in peoples faces makes it into a kind of inoculation, hopefully preventing it from actually happening.
As for the industry the author is in, this kind of product wouldn't even fit into a defense company's line. Defense companies produce products to neutralize an enemy, something for which an exploding headset would fall laughably short (maybe as a James Bond style assassination device?). A product like this would be more in line with a police/prison equipment supplier (for coercing people already under your physical control).
I’ve seen it essentially everywhere, including working in defense briefly. A dark sense of humor reflects actually thinking about the the more complex aspects of the work you do.
What’s being satirized here? The whole write up is basically a love letter to Sword Art Online.
If I made a game that shocked the players like in Never Say Never Again (which I have thought about doing multiple times since I was a kid), it wouldn’t be a satire. It would just be a thing.
Satire has a message. It has a target. What’s the target here?
Clearly satirical