Can war games really help us predict who will win a conflict?
Wargames are gaining a newfound prominence in analyses of future conflicts. The Russo-Ukraine war, and the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, have triggered a ‘disproportionate amount of attention’ on these niche activities.
Wargames - often called ‘simulations’ or ‘exercises’ - are not computerized combat scenarios. Rather, they are ‘interactive events’ with expert players and rule-bound scenarios. They are designed to answer simple questions: who would win a war over Taiwan? But each question demands a realistic combination of expertise, rules, and data collection, among other factors, for the simulation to be robust. ‘They can help us understand human behaviours in unpredictable and rare scenarios but not necessarily to predict the future.’