For the final episode of this series, Andrew is joined by Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider, the Director of the Hoover War Gaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative. The episode focuses on the value and variety of wargaming today. What does the field of wargaming look like now? What does it need going forward? And how can you play some of these games with us?

Key Points

Wargames are a useful tool for problem sets that lack good data, either because they happen rarely, like nuclear use, or because they’ve never happened, like a nuclear war.
As wargaming methods experience a renaissance, the traditional defense wargaming community is increasingly interacting with social scientists in the academy. Each group can learn from the other, and ideally those interactions will lead to engaging games that follow rigorous methodologies to answer analytical questions.
Emerging technologies, and novel use cases of existing technologies, are a particularly interesting area for wargaming. Much like nuclear use, there are many outstanding questions about the role of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, hypersonic missiles, and other technologies in war, with limited to no real world data. Wargames offer a chance to explore these technologies in a synthetic environment.
Wargames can also be a valuable tool in exploring the perspectives of other countries. Jacquelyn discusses her experience wargaming cyber vulnerabilities and their impact on nuclear stability in the U.S. - China context. In those games, keeping the gameplay abstract (ie. using fictional countries rather than real ones) allowed individuals to speak more freely than they would have during a real world scenario.

Jackie’s Reading Recommendations

Erik Lin-Greenberg, Reid B.C. Pauly, and Jacquelyn Schneider’s “Wargaming for International Relations Research” for European Journal of International Relations
Andrew Wilson’s The Bomb and the Computer The History of Professional Wargaming 1780-1968
Thomas B. Allen’s War Games: The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Makers Rehearsing World War III Today

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