A Throw of the Dice: Games the Pentagon Plays

Uniformed Services University medical students use the Triage, Transport and Track (T3) board game to learn about preparing for deployment. The game was developed by faculty members in USU’s Department of Military and Emergency Medicine. USU photo.

Welcome to the new year at Angry Planet.

For the last 100 years, American defense policy has been aided by elaborate war games. SIGMA, the Cold War Game, and the Millenium Challenge are just some of the most famous. Sometimes these games are played with dice and boards, other times they’re purely electronic. Why do we do this, when did we start, and what does it all mean? More importantly, how do we make sure the board games don’t play us?

Here to answer those questions is Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, Jacquelyn Schneider.

Also, as promised, I’ve launched the AP Discord server. We’ll get started slow and see how it goes. The invite link is below the paywall cut on this story.

What War Games Really Reveal

One episode of The Crisis Game on YouTube