Wargames

WarGames (1983) is a typical liberal "anti-war" movie, that is, a movie with the premise that America is wrong and American government leaders are stupid. The movie begins with a war exercise to discover what percent of missile launch teams will fire nuclear missiles with no information other than the fact that the launch order has been transmitted. Management is disappointed to discover that 1 in 5 teams refused to launch. So the old system, which requires two men to agree independently that the launch order is valid, is replaced with an automatic launch mechanism.

Matthew Broderick plays a teenager whose hobbies are video games (like the classic Galaga) and cracking into computer systems. In typical liberal style, the movie takes as a premise that a crucially important military computer system would provide a list of its resources to someone who had not logged in. But it also has the not so far-fetched idea that someone might use his own son's name as a login code. This is such an elementary breach of computer security that it provides redeeming value to an otherwise useless piece of liberal propaganda.

More far-fetched is the idea that the computer's main interface would be a natural-language chat program. Even more far-fetched is the idea that a remote terminal would be unmonitored by any security personnel and allow a user to impersonate a dead man with a closed user account. But the biggest farce of all is that a war games program would be connected with a live missile launch facility in such a way that any scenario entered would be interpreted as the real thing. The boy and his sidekick, thinking they are simply playing on a game publisher's computer, simulate Soviet launches against Las Vegas and Seattle.

What makes it entertaining (and not just an exercise in left-wing propaganda) is that the movie does indeed have a plot. The kid cracks security with "Joshua" (both the login code, and what he starts calling the AI program he's chatting with). He and the girl have fun playing a war game, but are scared of getting caught when they hear on the evening news that the game was taken seriously. Then the FBI arrest the kid and take him, of all places, directly to NORAD headquarters, where he's left alone with an unguarded computer terminal and logs in again! At this point, the kid is still trying to prove his innocence and tell the men what the program is doing. But they refuse to listen, and lock him up again - unguarded - in an infirmary room.

At the heart of the movie is a blurring between reality and fantasy, along with the highly appealing liberal (and adolescent) fantasy that you know something crucially important that no one else does. In David's case, he's the only one who knows that a rogue AI program is manipulating NORAD into a nuclear war with the USSR. The problem with this sort of fiction, as it is with other liberal fantasies, is the disconnection between theory and fact that comes when we allow ourselves the luxury of indulging our fantasies too much.

The movie ends with a "convincing" rationale, that the only way to deal with the risks of international nuclear war is to "refuse to play", presumably meaning that the US should have adopted a pacifist approach such as unilateral disarmament. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan did exactly the opposite and outspent the Soviets to win the Cold War.