Van and Lyle are joined by Sam Ratner, Policy Director at Win Without War, and Andy Facini, Communications Director at the Council on Strategic Risks, to discuss WarGames, John Badham’s Cold-War techno-thriller that accidentally foresaw the age of algorithmic warfare.
What begins as a teenage prank—Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman breaking into what he thinks is a computer game—quickly becomes a meditation on automation, deterrence, and human judgment in systems built to annihilate. Together, the group unpacks how WarGames’ “WOPR” supercomputer prefigures today’s AI decision-making, where machines learn to “take men out of the loop.” They trace how the film’s closing revelation (“The only winning move is not to play”) echoes across four decades of nuclear strategy and modern debates over escalation, autonomy, and control.
The conversation ranges from NORAD and machine learning to the moral limits of deterrence, the psychology of Cold-War adolescence, and the comic absurdity of believing one can win an unwinnable game. Like Dr. Strangelove before it, WarGames shows us a military machine that runs on fear, faith, and code, and a civilization learning to live with its own programmed self-destruction.
Further Reading
“Strategy & Conscience (The Book Review We Need),” by Van
Telehack, a retro internet simulator recommended by Andy
The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, by Sharon Weinberger
The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, by Paul N. Edwards
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, by Daniel Ellsberg
WarGames Trailer
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