Cyber Wargaming: Research and Education for Security in a Dangerous Digital World. Edited by Frank L. Smith III, Nina A. Kollars, and Benjamin H. Schechter. Georgetown University Press, 2024, 240 pp.
Wargaming is experiencing a renaissance in defense analysis and international relations research. Armed with new budgeting streams after the 2015 Department of Defense memorandum calling for the reinvigoration of wargaming, the field has grown exponentially.1 Yet, despite wargaming’s rebirth amidst the digital revolution, too many wargames neglect the weight of cyber operations and focus on purely physical aspects. This new anthology, edited by Frank Smith, Nina Kollars, and Benjamin Schechter, houses a series of informative essays that examine cyber theories and provide practical examples of wargaming for and with cyber effects. Cyber Wargaming is a much-needed infusion of the issue into analytical and educational wargaming.
The editors bring their diverse expertise to the collection. Smith is a professor at the US Naval War College and director of its cyber and innovation policy center, where Kollars now serves as a nonresident fellow. Schechter is a senior wargaming lead at Systems Planning and Analysis. Together they demonstrate a mix of academic, government, and private-sector experience in wargaming research and education.
The book is usefully divided into two major parts. The first, “Research Games,” focuses on analytical wargaming, examining how wargaming can be used to study the ways in which threats, opportunities, and human decision-making can shape cyber operations just as they shape more traditional warfighting domains.
The section opens with one of the strongest essays of the anthology. “Cyber Games as Synthetic Data” examines the use of cyber wargames to create synthetic data within a holistic research agenda. Like the nuclear warfare analysis, cyber researchers face a stark lack of data. So, like Thomas Schelling and nuclear researchers before them, the authors turn to wargaming as a way to build a synthetic dataset. Their article carefully wades through the issues of internal and external validity along with logistical or playability concerns, representing this as a wargamer’s trilemma.
“Wargames Research on Cyber and Nuclear Crisis Dynamics” follows this strong opening by providing examples of impactful wargames, including Eligible Receiver, a National Security Agency vs. Defense Department cyber wargame that comprised traditional tabletop gaming and penetration testing, and the International Crisis War Game, which tested nuclear-cyber escalation dynamics.
An essay on the Netwar and Island Intercept wargames shows cyber wargaming in a slightly different mold. Here, the authors admit that their treatment of cyber operations may not be perfectly realistic, as mentioned in the “Cyber Games” trilemma, but by emphasizing cyber effects, they captured human decision-making and preferred external validity.
The analytical wargaming section rounds out with examples from the Center for a New American Security gaming lab and the Center for Naval Analyses’ “Merlin” tool for cyber adjudication. Both of these essays provide great references for those looking to design better wargames and include cyber effects within traditional wargaming molds.
The section’s final essay, an analysis of the psychological aspects of wargaming, could have just as easily been placed in the second “Educational Wargaming” section, providing a useful bridge between the two parts. Using examples of wargames she helped design, the author explores the social psychology behind why one went well and the other failed.
The opening essay of second section brings into focus the contrast between wargaming for analysis and for education—a distinction that is often hazy—concentrating on gaming’s playfulness. Using research on games and an original game design, the author lays out the case for closing the gap between playfulness and “serious gaming.”
The rest of the section covers different examples or niches within wargaming. An essay on the 9/12 Cyber Strategy Challenge—the Atlantic Council’s annual cyber competition for cross-disciplinary university students—demonstrates another pathway into the cyber community. This policy-focused game series, the authors argue, brings different, less technically-minded recruits into the cybersecurity world through wargaming. Another essay discusses the growth and impact of the GridEx cyber wargames—designed for utility companies and government partners to address cyber threats to the electrical grid—from a cyber wargame to a more comprehensive wargame that includes robust cyber actions. These are followed by considerations of wargaming for businesses or military doctrine and tips on wargame prototyping or matrix-game design.
Overall, this book shines most in its opening essays. Discussions of wargaming to create synthetic data and concerns related to the designer’s trilemma echo throughout the rest of the anthology. The book’s many examples illustrate how it will appeal to different audiences. After reading the introductory chapters, readers interested in business applications might flip right to “Breaching the C-Suite”—an analysis on private sector cyber wargaming. If design applications are of greater interest, readers will find many of the same insights on design from the analysis of Island Intercept and Netwar.
The book would be a stretch for new wargamers. While providing practical advice, it assumes a robust professional understanding of wargaming. More novice audiences would likely have difficulty understanding designers’ trade-offs without more context from works like Sebastian J. Bae’s Forging Wargamers (Marine Corps University Press, 2022). This makes certain sections, like the discussion of the 9/12 Cyber Strategy game, seem somewhat non sequitur. Wargame designers would be better off reading Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming (Naval Institute Press, 1999) and new academic researchers would be served well to read “Wargaming for International Relations Research” before looking to tackle this book.2 While “Cyber Games as Synthetic Data” ties wargaming to other research methods, there is little discussion of wargame epistemology throughout the rest of the book.
Despite these minor misgivings, this anthology is a rich collection of insights into how wargaming can be useful for examining and teaching cyber warfare. Because of the authors’ assumptions of the reader’s knowledge, Cyber Wargaming is best for seasoned designers and practitioners who hope to better capture the complex character of cyber operations in their wargames. Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile addition to any wargamer’s library and will be a useful reference for any cyber professional looking to harness the power of wargaming.
Major Paul M. Kearney, USA
1 Robert Work, US deputy secretary of defense, memorandum, “Wargaming and Innovation,” 9 February 2015.
2 Erik Lin-Greenberg, Reid B. C. Pauly, and Jacquelyn G. Schnieder, “Wargaming for International Relations Research,” European Journal of International Relations 28, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/.