Dr. Bethany Goldblum, a professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California Berkeley and a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory joins Andrew for an introduction to the art and science of wargaming. In this episode you'll hear about what wargames are, how they're used, and how variations of an old method can help us think through some of today's most urgent questions.

Key Points

Historically, militaries and governments have used wargames as tools to ask and answer strategic questions, but they are now increasingly used outside of a military context. This means that wargaming is being opened up to different problem sets and a more diverse range of players and designers.
In recent years, there has been a rise in analytical wargaming, with scholars conducting wargames as experiments to test hypotheses. Wargames are a valuable analytical tool because they offer insights into human decision making, providing a useful counterbalance to formal approaches in the social sciences.
Wargaming is proving particularly useful for understanding the current strategic environment, as it provides insights into new capabilities and technologies whose effects may not yet be apparent in the real world.

Bethany’s Reading Recommendations:

Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming
Sebastian Bae’s X account
Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider and Dr. Reid Pauly’s work

A reading list to accompany this podcast series can be found at: https://brsl.berkeley.edu/podcasts/