Wargaming Weekly #030: Is professional wargaming finally going mainstream?
Not until Sydney Sweeney and Timothée Chalamet co-star in a WATU blockbuster
First of all, let’s have a moment of silence for my TOSHIBA laptop that finally gave up the ghost last night, right in the middle of me uploading this newsletter, after serving me diligently for a little over 10 years. May its silicon soul rest in eternal glory!
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Thank you, now let’s get back to regular programming, coming to you from the depths of a non descript internet cafe (yes, they still exist!) in this hot East African city.
Just a couple of months ago, famous geopolitics influencer Johnny Harris did a YouTube video about professional wargame exploring a Taiwan clockade and it has since raked in nearly 2 million views.
A few weeks ago, Business Insider covered Sebastian Bae’s smash hit Littoral Commander, a pioneer in bridging the gap between professional educational wargaming and hobbyist commercial wargaming.
This week, Sky News dropped the first episode of The Wargame, a new podcast series led by their Security and Defense Editor, Deborah Haynes and featuring highly qualified and widely experienced subject matter experts running a wargame about what would happen if Russia attacked the UK.
However, some have expressed doubts around the viability of the scenario.
Nonetheless, that aside, it does seem that professional wargaming is finally going mainstream.
However, like I argued back in March, it won’t really be mainstream until we have a Netflix series about WATU, the greatest professional wargaming story never told.
The WATU story has everything Netflix loves: strong female characters overcoming institutional sexism, wartime drama, mathematical genius, and historical significance.
Picture The Crown meets Hidden Figures with naval warfare. Professionals would love-hate it because it would finally bring serious attention to professional wargaming's real contributions, but inevitably dramatize and simplify the actual analytical work for entertainment value.
I absolutely believe that professional wargaming badly needs a huge cultural victory on the streaming platforms in order to get plenty of diverse talent flooding into the top of its recruitment funnel.
Actually, even for the traditional silver screen, I bet the WATU story could work great for a blockbuster in the cinemas too. Someone get Sydney Sweeney and Timothée Chalamet on the phone right now!
Now I’d like to double down.
Professional wargaming won’t go mainstream until there’s a hit TV show that professional wargamers absolutely hate the same way lawyers hate Suits and doctors hate House.
Something that regular people absolutely love but which completely misrepresents the reality of the job. Something that will make professional wargamers scream at their TVs, pull their hair out and pen furious think-pieces about why the show’s writers know absolutely nothing about how real wargames are planned, designed and conducted. That’s how watered down the show has to be.
If you ask me, professional wargaming needs a TV show in each of the following three subgenres:
1. Suits/Grey’s Anatomy
TV drama set in a defense contractor's wargaming division. Big professional case resolved every episode interlaced with family/romantic drama around the recurring cast of professional co-workers. Think passionate affairs between analysts, with each episode featuring a crisis requiring urgent wargaming solutions.
What would make professionals furious: The show portrays wargaming as dramatically decisive rather than analytically exploratory. Every simulation provides clear, actionable answers instead of highlighting uncertainties and assumptions. Characters are way too hot and have way too much time on their hands for trysts, dates and situationships.
2. House
A brilliant but troubled wargame designer takes on impossible analytical challenges. Like House with medical mysteries, each episode features a complex strategic problem that only our protagonist can solve through unconventional gaming approaches.
What would make professionals furious: The protagonist solves every problem through flash-of-genius moments rather than rigorous analytical process. Complex geopolitical situations get resolved through single brilliant insights during climactic gaming sessions.
3. The Office
Dry humor comedy series set in the office of a wargaming think tank. Awkward conversations with wargame sponsors, petty fights over the color of dice to use. Think Michael Scott in charge of RAND or CNA. Something like what Netflix did with Space Force after Trump made the U.S. Space Force the newest branch of the U.S. military.
What would make professionals furious: Actually, I bet professional wargamers would really love this one!
So you guys with friends in Hollywood should nudge them and point them at these ideas (looking at you, my three subscribers in California). Professional wargaming is so ripe to go mainstream in such a beautiful way… and I’m so ready to make my screenwriting debut!
Lastly… what’s that over there in the Business Corner?
HOT OFF THE PRESS! Four Silicon Valley tech executives from major companies are joining the U.S Army Reserve as officers in the newly established Detachment 201, an Executive Innovation Corps.
Defense News reports that, “The Pentagon has long turned to civilian experts for technological insight, from World War II-era scientists to modern advisory boards like the Defense Innovation Board. Detachment 201 takes the desire to collaborate with the high-technology industry to a new level: embedding senior tech execs directly into the Army Reserve as uniformed officers.”
Those first Army Reserve lieutenant colonels, who will be sworn in today are Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer; Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI.
Tech startup stars with their own unit in the army? This is so cool on so many levels! Straight out of my wildest armchair general dreams, to be honest. But between Silicon Valley slang and military lingo, can you imagine how insane the acronyms flying around in this corps will be?!
Yours in hex,
Rwizi.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Wargaming Weekly is curated, written and published by Rwizi Rweizooba Ainomugisha, a freelance writer, game designer and startup entrepreneur. Rwizi currently serves as Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Lupiiya Books - the social finance app that is gamifying the fundraising process for young African entrepreneurs. Wargaming Weekly is a curiosity chronicle of Rwizi’s exploration of the wargaming world… for the love of games in general, for the desire to contribute to the growth of wargaming in particular as a discipline, and lastly, for the hope of finding cutting-edge game design innovations to bring back with him to the startup world.
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