Film: War Game

Now here’s an interesting thing… screening at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Ad copy:

A bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations participate in an unscripted role-play exercise in which they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the U.S. military, in the wake of a contested presidential election.

Award-winning filmmakers Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber seize a unique opportunity to bring audiences tableside to a simulation that dramatically escalates the threat posed by January 6, 2021. With the grip of a thriller, War Game posits active-duty military breaking ranks to join an insurrection that soon spreads to other state capitals, yielding a chilling moment when it’s unclear whether the president fully commands the armed forces. The simulation’s outcome hinges on several inflection points, from the government’s capacity to counter the disinformation that’s effectively spread by the insurgent side to the potential invocation of the Insurrection Act (i.e., the last resort). While the exercise served to stress test our institutions, the film is a critical wake-up call, underscoring the urgent need for bipartisanship in safeguarding American democracy.

The event was organized by the Vet Voice Foundation, an organization that says it has 1.5 million members and works to involve veterans in politics and civil affairs.

I think the specific connection here is that one of the VVF’s senior advisors is MG (ret) Paul Eaton, who was involved in the 2020 Transition Integrity Project, a series of political scenario exercises in the United States involving over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders, academics, journalists, polling experts and former federal and state government officials.

The exercises included several matrix games. Rex Brynen wrote about them in his Paxsims blog here: https://paxsims.wordpress.com/tag/transition-integrity-project/

From the description I’m not sure if this is a film of an unfolding matrix game, but it could be.

Anyway, it is likely that this film will become available to view online after the Festival; if I hear anything about it I will post as the idea of a political coup by members of the military is one of those recurring fever-dream scenarios in American popular culture.

https://festival.sundance.org/program/film/6569fa68fac9f4522ac0337c 

[Edited to add: after a while this made it to several streaming services including Apple TV, where I finally saw it. Was pretty good! ]