The Ultimate War Game Might Be….War

This is an interesting yarn from Michael Ledeen over Bridge and its role as a cerebral activity for commanders. But the problem is that it reminds me a bit too much of the Weiqi/Go model of Chinese strategy. I think there’s an inherent limitation to “X is the real war game” or “our rivals are using Y, it is so much more mysterious and complex than ___” style analysis.

First, the entire reliance on the idea of board and card game playing as a model of intelligence was something Rodney Brooks destroyed decades ago. Chess, Go, etc are all mostly activities that are disengaged from action in the world. With the exception of stochastic games like Backgammon or partially observable games like Kriegspiel most of these games are also games of perfect information and zero chance. Either way, the problem is mostly the combinatorial explosion of possible states that need to be evaluated, which unsurprisingly lends itself well to brute-force computing of either the heavily tuned evaluation function or randomization variety. Humans solve these problems through efficient knowledge representation, chunking, and search. A case might be made instead that digital games that involve complex information processing and executive control tradeoffs are more challenging and indicative of military-relevant skill.

But that is the rub. Any wargame or vaguely militaristic game can be viewed as a dimensional reduction of strategic command, as a piece Kenneth Payne recently wrote argues. Which one you think is more useful or relevant or cerebral is really a matter of aesthetics. Professional policy and security gamers like Ellie Bartels or Rex Brynen don’t have a particular game formalism in mind — they just organize whatever simulation is relevant for the policy situation at hand. After all, while many kinds of wargames and simulations can focus the mind or build analytical skills, that isn’t really the goal of the type of simulation that Bartels or Brynen work with per se. It’s to draw out important aspects of the problem relevant to the decisionmaker.

Lastly, there’s something more than a bit problematic about the idea of an “ultimate war game.” Chess, Go, Kriegspiel, etc are games of leisure and fun. They have a historical link to wargaming, for sure, but they are also just still the manipulation of pieces on a board. The best way to prepare for war is still……preparing for war. Which is why we have a professional military education system rather than a giant Bridge club.