WEBVTT - A Serious Game 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:23.316 Bushkin. In C. S. Lewis's famous book The Lion, the 0:00:23.356 --> 0:00:27.036 Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensey Children happen upon the 0:00:27.076 --> 0:00:30.996 magical land of Narnia, entering through a secret passage in 0:00:31.036 --> 0:00:35.236 an English country house. When I spoke with Uniwong about 0:00:35.236 --> 0:00:38.636 her own adventures, that story was the first thing she 0:00:38.716 --> 0:00:40.716 brought up until recently. 0:00:40.796 --> 0:00:43.316 The path into war gaming is similar to the path 0:00:43.356 --> 0:00:46.796 to getting to Narnia. You stumble upon it by accident. 0:00:46.916 --> 0:00:49.196 It's not of your own design. You don't even know 0:00:49.236 --> 0:00:49.796 it exists. 0:00:50.836 --> 0:00:55.156 Narnia an imaginary world that teaches us something important about 0:00:55.196 --> 0:01:03.396 the real world. Uniwog zoom background is a steal from 0:01:03.476 --> 0:01:06.276 Star Wars R two D two, standing next to C 0:01:06.476 --> 0:01:10.036 three po. She's part of the group of intellectual scholars 0:01:10.076 --> 0:01:15.076 PhDs strategists who spend their careers helping the Pentagon think 0:01:15.076 --> 0:01:19.316 about how to better wage war and more importantly, how 0:01:19.356 --> 0:01:22.516 to better avoid war, and how do they do that 0:01:23.356 --> 0:01:24.516 by playing games. 0:01:29.676 --> 0:01:32.796 Someone said I should go to the Connection's worgaming conference. 0:01:32.916 --> 0:01:35.796 So that was in twenty eleven. But I walked into 0:01:35.876 --> 0:01:39.476 this room of middle aged men in baseball paths, hunched 0:01:39.516 --> 0:01:42.956 over miniatures, rolling dice, and I suddenly had this sense 0:01:42.996 --> 0:01:45.916 that I had come home and these were my people, 0:01:46.236 --> 0:01:48.196 and this is what I was supposed to have been 0:01:48.196 --> 0:01:50.316 doing all along, and I didn't know it. 0:01:50.716 --> 0:01:53.276 Why was it You walk in that room and you say, oh, 0:01:53.316 --> 0:01:56.196 this is where I belong. Can you explain why you 0:01:56.236 --> 0:01:56.876 had that feeling? 0:01:57.556 --> 0:02:02.756 I think it's the this is the It's the geekdom, right, 0:02:02.836 --> 0:02:06.236 Like geeks recognize each other at a deep level. So 0:02:06.316 --> 0:02:10.116 I recognize this brand of geeks at a deep level 0:02:10.156 --> 0:02:11.836 that I didn't realize existed. 0:02:15.556 --> 0:02:18.156 I'm fascinated by the idea that there's a certain kind 0:02:18.156 --> 0:02:20.316 of insight that you can only get from a simulation. 0:02:21.156 --> 0:02:24.676 Can you explain why is that? Why can't Why can't 0:02:24.676 --> 0:02:26.356 I look at a scenario with a bunch of smart 0:02:26.356 --> 0:02:28.476 people and without a simulation, come up with all of 0:02:28.476 --> 0:02:30.796 the different angles in a dance just on our own. 0:02:31.396 --> 0:02:32.476 Why do we need a wargame? 0:02:33.196 --> 0:02:36.756 I think we will invoke Thomas Shelling as is appropriate 0:02:36.796 --> 0:02:40.476 for nearly all occasions related to deterrence and wargaming and 0:02:40.556 --> 0:02:42.236 anything I think truly imaginative. 0:02:42.876 --> 0:02:46.236 Thomas Shelling was an economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and 0:02:46.276 --> 0:02:48.916 the spiritual godfather of the wargaming world. 0:02:49.276 --> 0:02:53.876 Game theory is merely the study of how rational people 0:02:53.956 --> 0:02:58.476 interact when they know that their decisions impinge on each other, 0:02:59.236 --> 0:03:02.476 when people have to anticipate what another will do or 0:03:02.476 --> 0:03:05.796 what another is already doing, or when people try to 0:03:05.876 --> 0:03:09.476 influence the choices of others through threats and promise and 0:03:09.596 --> 0:03:13.636 various devices to change their expectations of how one will behave. 0:03:14.356 --> 0:03:17.916 He once wrote that no one, no matter how intelligent, 0:03:18.036 --> 0:03:19.796 can make a list of the things that would not 0:03:19.876 --> 0:03:21.196 occur to them. 0:03:21.396 --> 0:03:24.316 And if we've learned anything recently, it is surely that 0:03:24.356 --> 0:03:27.796 there is an ever expanding list of things that have 0:03:27.876 --> 0:03:32.396 not occurred to us. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're 0:03:32.476 --> 0:03:37.276 listening to Revisionist History by podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. 0:03:38.156 --> 0:03:41.516 This episode is about the idea that the best way 0:03:41.636 --> 0:03:45.276 to prepare for the unexpected is not to make plans 0:03:45.756 --> 0:03:52.076 or predictions, but to play games, not board games. Grand 0:03:52.396 --> 0:03:57.036 theatrical productions costing many thousands of dollars, planned over months, 0:03:57.116 --> 0:04:01.396 stretching for days, experts and specialists playing each role, each 0:04:01.636 --> 0:04:04.116 with the passion of an actor on a Broadway stage, 0:04:04.396 --> 0:04:06.716 with the hope that the rest of us will learn 0:04:06.716 --> 0:04:19.636 from what they found in their elaborate imagine worlds. When 0:04:19.636 --> 0:04:21.916 I was young, we lived in a house by the 0:04:22.036 --> 0:04:25.236 highway with a very long, narrow backyard one hundred and 0:04:25.316 --> 0:04:28.196 fifty yards deep, lined with what must have been more 0:04:28.196 --> 0:04:32.276 than one hundred tall pauper trees. In the fall, when 0:04:32.276 --> 0:04:35.436 the leaves fell, we all realized that raking the leaves 0:04:35.476 --> 0:04:39.636 would be an overwhelming task. So my father through a party. 0:04:40.316 --> 0:04:43.036 He was a math professor and decided to invite all 0:04:43.076 --> 0:04:45.956 of his graduate students in the afternoon. He told them 0:04:46.076 --> 0:04:48.556 they would deal with the leaves. In the evening, there 0:04:48.556 --> 0:04:51.476 would be a big dinner and then party games of 0:04:51.516 --> 0:04:55.476 the sort that eccentric math professors consider appropriate for their 0:04:55.476 --> 0:05:00.076 graduate students. My father students were all from overseas, from 0:05:00.076 --> 0:05:03.676 the top colleges of India, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Israel. I 0:05:03.716 --> 0:05:06.196 don't think any of them had ever raked leaves before, 0:05:06.716 --> 0:05:09.076 but my father believed strongly that a day of year 0:05:09.116 --> 0:05:12.116 hard work and playing games was as good as life. 0:05:12.116 --> 0:05:19.476 God and his students picked up on his enthusiasm. The 0:05:19.556 --> 0:05:24.116 leaf raking turned into sport. The games were hilarious, they convoluted, 0:05:24.316 --> 0:05:27.236 and the party proved such a success that Every year, 0:05:27.516 --> 0:05:29.916 a new crop of students would show up, and the 0:05:29.996 --> 0:05:34.036 leaf breakers from previous years would invite themselves back, until 0:05:34.036 --> 0:05:38.196 the party became huge, a united nations of math geeks 0:05:38.196 --> 0:05:42.316 in our backyard, creating huge piles of leaves calling out 0:05:42.356 --> 0:05:49.276 to each other in strange accents. My working definition of 0:05:49.436 --> 0:05:53.356 smart at the age of eight or nine was knowing things. 0:05:53.876 --> 0:05:56.156 But when I listened in on the dozens of Africans 0:05:56.156 --> 0:05:59.036 and Indians in my backyard, it seemed to me that 0:05:59.116 --> 0:06:02.636 they defined themselves by what they didn't know. They would 0:06:02.636 --> 0:06:06.076 never say I just solved such and such problem that 0:06:06.236 --> 0:06:10.076 was boring ancient history. They would say, I'm working on 0:06:10.156 --> 0:06:13.676 a problem. There is something that I don't understand that 0:06:13.756 --> 0:06:15.956 I wish I did, and an even larger group of 0:06:15.996 --> 0:06:18.956 things I don't yet know that I don't know, with 0:06:19.036 --> 0:06:22.116 the clear implication the pleasure of finding out the unknown 0:06:22.516 --> 0:06:26.596 was why they got up in the morning. I hadn't 0:06:26.636 --> 0:06:28.796 thought of the leaf raking party for a long time 0:06:29.356 --> 0:06:34.196 until I started talking to the wargamers, when I realized, oh, 0:06:34.716 --> 0:06:37.436 these people all belonged to the same tribe. 0:06:37.876 --> 0:06:41.236 I think that what wargaming does is by putting people 0:06:41.436 --> 0:06:48.676 in these simulated positions, these realistic but unreal realities. It 0:06:48.916 --> 0:06:53.796 encourages them to and exposes them to things they maybe 0:06:53.876 --> 0:06:55.196 haven't bought up. 0:06:55.756 --> 0:06:58.756 That's David Shlaypak, who was one of the founding directors 0:06:58.796 --> 0:07:02.276 of the Center for Gaming at the RAND Corporation. RAND 0:07:02.436 --> 0:07:04.796 is the big think tank out in Santa Monica that's 0:07:04.796 --> 0:07:08.356 been running wargames for years. Yuniwong worked at RAND, so 0:07:08.476 --> 0:07:12.156 did Thomashef, author of The Wargamer's Creed. One of the 0:07:12.196 --> 0:07:15.476 things Shlaypack started doing in his wargames was to make 0:07:15.596 --> 0:07:19.796 the element of chance tangible. You have one army against another, 0:07:20.116 --> 0:07:22.276 you make a list of the ten different things that 0:07:22.396 --> 0:07:26.316 could conceivably happen, and then you roll the dice. 0:07:26.796 --> 0:07:29.356 And the first time we did that, I was terrified. 0:07:30.516 --> 0:07:32.356 I was thinking, when we go in front of a 0:07:32.356 --> 0:07:35.396 bunch of people who have experienced combat, who have actually 0:07:35.396 --> 0:07:39.196 been fighting real wars for the last fifteen years, and 0:07:39.236 --> 0:07:42.916 we show them that we're going to use dice, they're 0:07:42.956 --> 0:07:44.796 just gonna laugh us out of the room. And we 0:07:44.796 --> 0:07:47.596 had all sorts of arguments prepared about why that was legitimate. 0:07:47.996 --> 0:07:50.676 He was going to play the wargame with senior military 0:07:50.676 --> 0:07:53.276 officers and he didn't know how they would react. 0:07:53.676 --> 0:07:59.396 We were ready to defend it, and nobody batted an eyelash. 0:07:59.716 --> 0:08:03.836 The military guys playing Schlapeck's games didn't want things to 0:08:03.876 --> 0:08:07.676 be predictable. Predictable they could do on their own. What 0:08:07.756 --> 0:08:10.556 they wanted was to be forced off the narrow path 0:08:10.596 --> 0:08:18.076 that logic and prior experience would have them follow. Schleepek 0:08:18.356 --> 0:08:20.276 was once involved in a game to test what would 0:08:20.276 --> 0:08:25.356 happen if the Russians invaded the Baltics, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, 0:08:25.516 --> 0:08:29.596 three small countries right next to Russia, all members of NATO. 0:08:29.836 --> 0:08:32.636 If Russia attacked, it would face the wrath of Western 0:08:32.636 --> 0:08:36.796 Europe plus the United States. On paper, the wargame seemed 0:08:36.836 --> 0:08:39.596 to be based on a dumb question. Who would win? 0:08:39.836 --> 0:08:40.716 We would? 0:08:41.916 --> 0:08:47.476 NATO has thirty five times Russia's GDP. Russia is just 0:08:47.516 --> 0:08:50.676 emerging from this demographic crisis that is more severe than 0:08:51.476 --> 0:08:55.876 any that's ever been inflicted on an advanced nation. Their 0:08:55.916 --> 0:08:59.196 military has been on the downslope for twenty five years. 0:08:59.796 --> 0:09:02.156 This is a no brainer. Of course NATO's going to win. 0:09:03.636 --> 0:09:06.756 But the first time they played it, NATO didn't win. 0:09:07.156 --> 0:09:11.076 Russia did now mean Russia would actually win in a 0:09:11.116 --> 0:09:14.036 battle against the Baltics. No, this was a game, an 0:09:14.076 --> 0:09:17.916 active imagination, but it did show everyone involved that an 0:09:17.956 --> 0:09:23.676 absurdly remote possibility had to be taken seriously. Schlapek ran 0:09:23.716 --> 0:09:28.156 the game again and again. Russia always won. 0:09:28.436 --> 0:09:32.596 Russia's always winning, and in fact we eventually started telling people, look, 0:09:33.356 --> 0:09:36.316 we've done everything except go out on the street and 0:09:36.356 --> 0:09:40.356 grab random individuals and ask them to play. And no 0:09:40.396 --> 0:09:44.396 one's done better than X. Can you do better than X? 0:09:46.316 --> 0:09:51.036 The expectations and predictions of experts are useful, but only 0:09:51.156 --> 0:09:54.316 up to a point. The war game is where you 0:09:54.356 --> 0:10:13.036 put those expectations to the test. A few years ago 0:10:13.316 --> 0:10:16.556 I was invited to join Rand's Board of Trustees. It 0:10:16.676 --> 0:10:20.276 requires two meetings a year, one at RAND headquarters in 0:10:20.356 --> 0:10:23.196 Santa Monica, the other at their office near the Pentagon 0:10:23.516 --> 0:10:27.556 in northern Virginia. Half of every board meeting is devoted 0:10:27.556 --> 0:10:32.556 to the kinds of things that nonprofits worry about, budgets, fundraising, hiring. 0:10:33.036 --> 0:10:37.836 The other half is research presentations from RAND staffers, like 0:10:38.436 --> 0:10:41.276 the electricity grid in Puerto Rico has just been wiped 0:10:41.316 --> 0:10:43.796 out by Hurricane Maria. How much would it take to 0:10:43.836 --> 0:10:48.276 fix it? Or do American school children get enough sleep. 0:10:49.036 --> 0:10:53.356 But my favorite presentations are always the war games. Like 0:10:53.396 --> 0:10:56.716 this one. The Army comes to RAND with a question. 0:10:57.436 --> 0:11:00.556 They asked us to do a war game type of 0:11:00.596 --> 0:11:04.836 analysis to understand what it would take to secure loose 0:11:04.916 --> 0:11:07.236 nuclear weapons in a failed North Korean state. 0:11:07.716 --> 0:11:11.916 That's Colonel John Gentia, retired Army former tank commander. He 0:11:11.956 --> 0:11:15.276 did two tours in Iraq. He's a doctorate from Stanford 0:11:15.476 --> 0:11:18.476 and taught history at West Point. He's now a senior 0:11:18.596 --> 0:11:21.276 historian at RAND, and he gave a presentation to the 0:11:21.276 --> 0:11:26.676 board about his North Korean game. Wargames always start with 0:11:26.756 --> 0:11:31.036 a path to war, an imaginary but plausible scenario that 0:11:31.156 --> 0:11:35.236 explains why a conflict might start. In this case, the 0:11:35.276 --> 0:11:39.516 scenario was a sudden spike intentions between North Korea and 0:11:39.556 --> 0:11:40.836 the United States. 0:11:42.836 --> 0:11:46.316 That led to a number of other events where the 0:11:46.396 --> 0:11:50.156 US starts to mobilize forces in the US ground forces 0:11:50.396 --> 0:11:53.316 starts putting him on ships, you know, in the ports 0:11:53.356 --> 0:11:56.796 of Texas in California. North Korea is aware of all 0:11:56.836 --> 0:12:01.356 of this, tells the US to stop, and it doesn't. 0:12:01.516 --> 0:12:03.996 And I think at some point in that road to 0:12:04.076 --> 0:12:09.876 war scenario, we had the North Koreans firing a small 0:12:10.436 --> 0:12:14.636 nuclear round and just know it was a conventional missile 0:12:14.956 --> 0:12:17.156 that hit the US island of guang. 0:12:21.036 --> 0:12:24.596 Just imagine that this had actually happened, a North Korean 0:12:24.596 --> 0:12:28.196 attack on American soil. The world will be in crisis. 0:12:28.716 --> 0:12:32.276 The US would have to respond. But the problem is 0:12:32.316 --> 0:12:36.676 that North Korea is a country with an expanding nuclear program, 0:12:36.756 --> 0:12:39.236 and if a war broke out, a whole lot of 0:12:39.476 --> 0:12:43.796 exceedingly dangerous nuclear material would suddenly be floating around in 0:12:43.836 --> 0:12:46.796 the midst of a whole lot of chaos. The army 0:12:46.796 --> 0:12:50.036 one to know what would happen next, what would it 0:12:50.076 --> 0:12:58.156 take to round up all those stray nukes. Rand spent 0:12:58.356 --> 0:13:01.796 months blending the game. Then Genteel and his team flew 0:13:01.836 --> 0:13:04.156 to South Korea to play it out for the army 0:13:04.636 --> 0:13:07.756 a big conference room a map of the Korean peninsula 0:13:07.796 --> 0:13:08.396 on the table. 0:13:09.316 --> 0:13:12.596 In that game, we did use counters like the little 0:13:12.636 --> 0:13:15.236 square you know wargame that this is a tank brigade, 0:13:15.236 --> 0:13:18.916 this is an artillery battalion or whatever, with numbers on them. 0:13:19.436 --> 0:13:22.836 Do you have one person playing each actor? 0:13:23.276 --> 0:13:25.356 I think we had two separate teams, and we may 0:13:25.396 --> 0:13:29.036 have run two different games, but we had the Army 0:13:29.076 --> 0:13:33.316 colonels play the Blue Military Forces. 0:13:33.196 --> 0:13:36.836 Blue team in wargames speak, is the home team the 0:13:36.916 --> 0:13:40.796 United States and its allies. The colonels were playing themselves. 0:13:41.196 --> 0:13:45.796 One of rand's top East Asia specialists, Mike Mazar, played 0:13:45.836 --> 0:13:49.556 North Korea genteel, and some of his fellow RAND staffers 0:13:49.556 --> 0:13:55.276 served as referees. In the first run, the US and 0:13:55.356 --> 0:13:59.556 South Korean forces attacked across the demilitarized Zone, the border 0:13:59.636 --> 0:14:02.836 that separates North and South Korea, maybe the most dangerous 0:14:02.876 --> 0:14:08.396 border in the world. Land mines everywhere. The result was 0:14:08.476 --> 0:14:13.156 catastrophe losses. In the next version of the game, the 0:14:13.276 --> 0:14:15.676 US and South Korea imagine that they could broke or 0:14:15.676 --> 0:14:17.916 a deal with a faction of the North Korean Army 0:14:18.076 --> 0:14:21.116 to let them across, which got them to the other side. 0:14:21.396 --> 0:14:24.156 But now they had an even bigger challenge. 0:14:24.436 --> 0:14:26.876 I mean, it's freaking hard as hell. I mean, a 0:14:26.916 --> 0:14:31.676 failed North Korean state with a nuclear weapons writ large. 0:14:32.076 --> 0:14:37.156 You know, parts of a nuclear device, delivery systems, records, 0:14:37.196 --> 0:14:40.236 documents of scientists, all those kinds of things to track 0:14:40.276 --> 0:14:43.116 those down in the chaos of a North Korean state. 0:14:43.156 --> 0:14:43.916 It was pretty clear. 0:14:44.036 --> 0:14:44.996 What was your conclusion? 0:14:45.156 --> 0:14:46.396 Was it possible? 0:14:47.156 --> 0:14:51.316 Oh, yes, but it won't take weeks, it won't take months. 0:14:51.436 --> 0:14:52.796 It's gonna take years. 0:14:54.156 --> 0:14:57.116 In the game, it took thousands of soldiers to secure 0:14:57.516 --> 0:14:59.876 even a single North Korean installation. 0:15:00.676 --> 0:15:03.956 It took that long because you just you have to 0:15:03.956 --> 0:15:07.236 secure the outside of it, which requires forces to do that. 0:15:07.636 --> 0:15:10.356 Then you have to move inside of it. Potentially there 0:15:10.436 --> 0:15:13.556 could be North Korean forces that still wanted to fight 0:15:13.636 --> 0:15:14.436 to protect it. 0:15:14.916 --> 0:15:18.356 How many sites do we think they have, oh. 0:15:18.236 --> 0:15:20.916 More than one? And then let's not even take into 0:15:20.956 --> 0:15:25.756 account the chemical weapons, potential biological weapons that North Korea has. 0:15:26.436 --> 0:15:31.076 But we're talking scores and scores and scores of nuclear sites. 0:15:31.396 --> 0:15:34.676 Remember from my Board of Trustees talk, I made the 0:15:34.716 --> 0:15:39.116 point that core nuclear components to one of those nuclear warheads, 0:15:39.156 --> 0:15:40.956 you could put it in the size of your backpack 0:15:42.076 --> 0:15:44.396 and so then you could scurry it off on a 0:15:44.476 --> 0:15:46.956 road with a civilian carrying it. So it just presents 0:15:46.996 --> 0:15:48.076 all kinds of problems. 0:15:48.476 --> 0:15:50.436 It is talked to the ran boat about the game. 0:15:50.836 --> 0:15:55.836 Gentiel also spend a surprising amount of time on traffic jams. 0:15:56.316 --> 0:15:58.916 Because armies aren't the only factor in a military crisis. 0:15:59.356 --> 0:16:03.236 North Korean refugees would start streaming across the border. South 0:16:03.316 --> 0:16:06.676 Koreans would start fleeing their capital, so the US and 0:16:06.756 --> 0:16:10.196 Japanese governments would order the citizens to leave the country 0:16:10.436 --> 0:16:12.956 at the same time as a huge army is trying 0:16:12.956 --> 0:16:16.236 to head towards the border, which adds up to the 0:16:16.236 --> 0:16:19.836 mother of all traffic jams. As I listened to Genteel 0:16:20.076 --> 0:16:24.596 that day at RAND, I remember thinking traffic jams as 0:16:24.636 --> 0:16:28.156 a factor in any war with North Korea. That had 0:16:28.156 --> 0:16:30.596 not occurred to me, and I assumed that was because 0:16:30.596 --> 0:16:33.276 I'm not a military expert. But then I looked around 0:16:33.276 --> 0:16:36.716 the room at the people who were particularly Harold Brown, 0:16:37.116 --> 0:16:41.956 the gray eminence of the American defense establishment, big Leonine Head, 0:16:42.436 --> 0:16:46.276 thick black rimmed glasses, even in his nineties, the smartest 0:16:46.316 --> 0:16:49.396 person in any room he walked into. He had a 0:16:49.436 --> 0:16:53.476 look in his eyes, and I realized, Oh, traffic jams 0:16:53.996 --> 0:16:57.396 had not occurred to him either. Now, what did the 0:16:57.396 --> 0:17:00.316 wargame teach the army. They already knew it would be 0:17:00.316 --> 0:17:03.436 hard to secure nuclear weapons in a failed North Korea. 0:17:04.236 --> 0:17:07.076 The wargame just told them how hard it would be. 0:17:07.636 --> 0:17:10.796 There's people on the road. If you're passing through the DMZ, 0:17:11.116 --> 0:17:15.556 chemical weapons may have been used, so the military forces 0:17:16.036 --> 0:17:19.516 have to put on protective gear to move through a 0:17:19.596 --> 0:17:21.196 chemically contamidated area. 0:17:23.516 --> 0:17:26.156 Everyone in the tanks has to be in full chemical 0:17:26.156 --> 0:17:30.396 protection gear, body suit, mask, rubber gloves, boots, what the 0:17:30.476 --> 0:17:33.076 US military calls MOP for protection. 0:17:36.436 --> 0:17:38.676 Can you imagine what it's like trying to move through 0:17:38.676 --> 0:17:42.196 this kind of terrain where a Bradley commander or a 0:17:42.236 --> 0:17:45.436 tank commander is buttoned up and in MOP for and 0:17:45.476 --> 0:17:48.636 can only look out through the little sites on the 0:17:48.636 --> 0:17:52.836 top of the turret or even through the optics. And 0:17:52.876 --> 0:17:56.996 then bring in the fact that potentially there's combat action 0:17:58.276 --> 0:18:04.116 where US tanks, North Korean tanks, infantry are being destroyed, killed, 0:18:05.156 --> 0:18:10.716 cries for help, blood, anger, all these kinds of thing things, 0:18:10.436 --> 0:18:14.316 the anguish of seeing people on the road freezing to death, 0:18:14.436 --> 0:18:17.796 can't do anything about it. And then there's just the 0:18:17.956 --> 0:18:22.396 anger and the hatred, the desire for revenge, to kill, 0:18:23.316 --> 0:18:26.236 And then you're trying to manage all of that and 0:18:26.316 --> 0:18:30.596 still carry out the mission. It would be easy for 0:18:30.636 --> 0:18:34.116 the North Koreans to build an atomic ied and to 0:18:34.196 --> 0:18:37.676 plot that in a choke point going through a steep valley, 0:18:37.996 --> 0:18:40.596 and to set that off. Then you have that, and 0:18:40.636 --> 0:18:44.836 then the whole larger operational political context of now a 0:18:44.956 --> 0:18:47.756 nuclear weapon has been used, what will be the US response? 0:18:47.836 --> 0:18:48.836 All those kind of things. 0:18:57.116 --> 0:19:01.596 The wargame added detail, color, emotion to the Army's understanding, 0:19:01.996 --> 0:19:04.676 and the army ordered up the wargame because they knew 0:19:04.796 --> 0:19:07.756 enough to know that many of those details would be 0:19:07.796 --> 0:19:09.676 on the long list of things that had ever occurred 0:19:09.676 --> 0:19:13.156 to them. These are the details that clear your mind 0:19:13.196 --> 0:19:17.676 of wishful thinking, of comforting delusions, of the false reassurance 0:19:18.276 --> 0:19:19.276 of overconfidence. 0:19:19.836 --> 0:19:23.476 Sherman said, war's hell, and you cannot refine it. And 0:19:23.556 --> 0:19:26.436 I've said this before. Look, I mean for the US Army, 0:19:26.516 --> 0:19:30.396 US military, Iraq and Afghanistan was not easy, right, and 0:19:30.476 --> 0:19:33.036 it was specially not easy for the populations of those 0:19:33.076 --> 0:19:35.476 two countries. I mean devastating in a lot of ways. 0:19:36.436 --> 0:19:40.956 But this kind of conflict war on the Korean Peninsula 0:19:41.396 --> 0:19:45.676 would make what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan look very, 0:19:45.796 --> 0:19:47.916 very simple in comparison. 0:19:48.836 --> 0:19:52.476 A wargame is a reality check, And I think we're 0:19:52.516 --> 0:19:56.356 willing to test our illusions with reality checks only if 0:19:56.396 --> 0:19:59.516 we practice, if we make it a habit, if we 0:19:59.716 --> 0:20:03.756 keep reminding ourselves that the world outside our imagination is 0:20:03.916 --> 0:20:08.196 much larger than the world inside it. This is what 0:20:08.236 --> 0:20:10.716 the leafreakers tod for all those years ago in my 0:20:10.796 --> 0:20:16.516 family's backyard. They took a chance on an afternoon of 0:20:16.596 --> 0:20:19.396 doing something that they had never done before and which 0:20:19.436 --> 0:20:22.476 did not, at least in the abstract, sound like fun. 0:20:23.236 --> 0:20:27.116 And then afterwards, a twenty something advanced math doctoral student 0:20:27.156 --> 0:20:30.276 from Bangalore would sit down with another math whiz from 0:20:30.396 --> 0:20:33.596 Legos and a third from the West Bank, and they 0:20:33.596 --> 0:20:37.596 would play Charades on a team together. Charades is a 0:20:37.596 --> 0:20:41.796 game that depends on shared cultural understanding, but here it 0:20:41.876 --> 0:20:45.796 was being played by three people with no shared cultural understanding, 0:20:46.156 --> 0:20:49.556 which is what made it fun. The experience of figuring 0:20:49.596 --> 0:20:52.556 it out, of learning what figuring it out felt like, 0:20:53.236 --> 0:20:56.796 was so intoxicatingly unpredictable that they would all come back 0:20:56.876 --> 0:20:59.716 the next year and the year after that, even after 0:20:59.716 --> 0:21:03.836 they had gotten their PhDs and moved far away, only 0:21:03.876 --> 0:21:07.836 to discover when they returned, of course, that Charades had 0:21:07.876 --> 0:21:11.436 been replaced by some brand new and fiendishly impossible game 0:21:11.476 --> 0:21:15.396 of my father's invention. All the leaf breakers knew is 0:21:15.436 --> 0:21:18.076 that they wouldn't know what would happen after the leaves 0:21:18.076 --> 0:21:33.036 were raked, and that was enough one final wargame, one 0:21:33.076 --> 0:21:38.076 that I still can't stop thinking about, designed by Uniwong Okay. 0:21:38.676 --> 0:21:41.516 So the wargame began with sort of China trying to 0:21:41.556 --> 0:21:45.156 exert creater control and signal that they were in control 0:21:45.196 --> 0:21:47.396 of the region and more dominant now in the region, 0:21:47.436 --> 0:21:49.956 and the United States and Japan were really resisting that. 0:21:50.636 --> 0:21:53.996 Yuniwog's scenario was set in the future at a time 0:21:54.036 --> 0:21:57.436 when the world's major militaries have gone all in on 0:21:57.596 --> 0:21:58.756 artificial intelligence. 0:21:58.996 --> 0:22:03.196 There was this premise that AI is going to fundamentally 0:22:03.276 --> 0:22:06.276 change warfare. I propose the idea because I was like, well, 0:22:06.676 --> 0:22:08.596 what happens if all your dreams come true? 0:22:08.636 --> 0:22:08.716 Right? 0:22:08.756 --> 0:22:10.676 There's a lot of work asking whether or not the 0:22:10.716 --> 0:22:15.196 Pentagon can really integrate AI in the way they hoped to, 0:22:15.516 --> 0:22:18.036 But I'm like, well, what if you got everything you wanted. 0:22:18.516 --> 0:22:21.556 The game was held in a conference room at rand's Washington, 0:22:21.636 --> 0:22:26.196 DC office. Someone playing China, another person playing Japan, the 0:22:26.316 --> 0:22:31.716 US North Korea. A senior information scientist from rand's California office, 0:22:31.996 --> 0:22:35.756 a Shandi Shaba, flew in to represent the commercial AI sector. 0:22:36.516 --> 0:22:39.956 Yuniwang was part of what's called white team, part referee, 0:22:40.356 --> 0:22:45.516 part instigator, The road to war was deceptively simple, lots 0:22:45.516 --> 0:22:48.796 of muscle flexing between the US and China, leading to 0:22:48.876 --> 0:22:52.156 Japan and the United States launching a cyber attack on 0:22:52.196 --> 0:22:56.636 a Chinese aircraft carrier. The Chinese responded with a flyby 0:22:56.836 --> 0:23:00.076 near US vessels, and with that the game was off 0:23:00.076 --> 0:23:00.516 and running. 0:23:04.796 --> 0:23:07.276 The U and I States in Japan then went off 0:23:07.316 --> 0:23:09.756 and then consulted with each other and came back announced 0:23:09.796 --> 0:23:13.236 they were holding a large joint military exercise around the 0:23:13.276 --> 0:23:14.356 Sankaku Islands. 0:23:14.876 --> 0:23:18.236 The US and Japan put their missile defense on full auto, 0:23:18.836 --> 0:23:23.116 meaning they programmed the artificial intelligence systems running the missiles 0:23:23.476 --> 0:23:28.596 to respond automatically and immediately to any hostile act. They 0:23:28.596 --> 0:23:31.436 did that to send a message to China, don't do 0:23:31.676 --> 0:23:36.476 anything rash. But then out of the blue, North Korea 0:23:36.516 --> 0:23:39.236 decided to join in by firing off a missile on 0:23:39.276 --> 0:23:50.836 its own, aimed at a major Japanese city. Luckily, the 0:23:50.876 --> 0:23:54.516 missile was intercepted before it could do any damage. What 0:23:54.556 --> 0:23:57.356 are they doing, They're signaling that they're standing with China. 0:23:58.596 --> 0:24:02.556 Yes, so sometimes I say China has one ally and 0:24:02.596 --> 0:24:04.876 it's the worst ally in the world, and it's North Korea. 0:24:05.356 --> 0:24:07.756 So that is a very complicated relationship. But in the game, 0:24:07.796 --> 0:24:10.996 they did not pressure them. This was just North Korea 0:24:11.036 --> 0:24:13.196 decided they would try to be helpful and this was 0:24:13.196 --> 0:24:13.596 the result. 0:24:14.076 --> 0:24:17.836 But remember in this wargame scenario, the US and Japan 0:24:18.116 --> 0:24:22.156 had their defense systems on full auto, programmed to respond 0:24:22.476 --> 0:24:27.076 automatically and immediately to any provocation. Did the US and 0:24:27.196 --> 0:24:30.156 China in the game. It just never occurred to them 0:24:30.396 --> 0:24:32.516 that if North Korea weighed in and they were on 0:24:32.596 --> 0:24:35.436 full auto, we might end up dragging North Korea into 0:24:35.476 --> 0:24:36.036 the conflict. 0:24:36.396 --> 0:24:39.316 Correct, it was the focus was on signaling to China 0:24:39.396 --> 0:24:42.676 and nobody thought about potential North Korean behavior. 0:24:42.876 --> 0:24:46.156 So North Korea does this thing, the AI fires back 0:24:46.156 --> 0:24:46.876 at North Korea. 0:24:46.996 --> 0:24:47.196 Yes. 0:24:47.316 --> 0:24:52.036 China then responded with a limited blockade of Japan. So 0:24:52.076 --> 0:24:56.196 they announced the blockade, and the AI sent a single 0:24:56.276 --> 0:24:59.836 destroyer to a single Japanese port to enforce this blockade. 0:24:59.956 --> 0:25:03.836 This is where the plays for South Korea and Japan said, well, 0:25:03.956 --> 0:25:06.196 that was a failure. But the United States team was 0:25:06.236 --> 0:25:09.356 really extremely confused and said, wait, we like, I don't 0:25:09.436 --> 0:25:11.196 understand what's going on here. I don't understand what the 0:25:11.276 --> 0:25:12.036 AI is doing. 0:25:12.636 --> 0:25:15.156