Pirates, yellowcake, and the press at Patterson

Rob Farley has a post up about the recent crisis game at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. He links to the in-game press reports about the action, which give a pretty good idea of how things worked (posts are listed in blog-style reverse chronological order, so start at the bottom of the page). What's most interesting to me about this setup is that they brought in journalism students to play the world media and produce their press reports within the game, interviewing the participants as things moved along. It's an interesting concept. The media are frequently represented in this sort of exercise, but in the examples I've seen (particularly Simulex at the Fletcher School, which I will have to describe in more detail sometime), the "media" is a tool of the control team, used for distributing information (and disinformation) about developments in the scenario to the participants, rarely if ever producing reporting ON the participants. Bringing in journalism students to do so seems like a great way to kill two birds with one stone. The other participants get a taste of operating in a global media environment, while the journalists have an international crisis staged for them to practice reporting on. And as a bonus, it resulted in an easily readable account of the weekend. This is not something that would work for every crisis game, perhaps not even many of them, but it's a nice feature for this one.

Orbis Forum on Political and Military Gaming

In 1984, the journal Orbis published a series of articles on the state of political-military gaming. The exchange is unfortunately not available for free online, but it appeared in the winter 1984 issue, which is probably widely available at university libraries. As a group, these articles are an excellent source of reflections on gaming by some prominent practitioners and theorists.

This is a long post, and it covers four separate articles. If I had known it would take me so long to get around to finishing it, I would have split it up. Lesson learned.

Lincoln Bloomfield was a pioneer in political-military gaming, particularly in his work organizing research-oriented political exercises (referred to as POLEXes) for senior-level decisionmakers at MIT in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's. All of the POLEX research results are apparently unclassified, but I can't find any reference to them on the web. In his Orbis contribution, Bloomfield discusses the history, practice, and realism of political gaming, based on his own experience. His explanation of how free-form gaming requires experienced participants in order to generate useful policy results is particularly well laid out:

No satisfactory model yet exists of the national security decisionmaking system of the United States (or any other country), nor of the larger system of interactions and perceptions that connects them. Thus one either specifies a crude, oversimplified model or relies on the complex model inside the heads of experienced professionals. How successfully a simulation emulates reality depends on the extent of the players' knowledge of the structures, routines, and probable responses of decisionmakers. Great pedagogic, but little policy value results from putting inexperienced individuals in the shoes of decisionmakers.

Even today the national security decisionmaking process is not sufficiently understood as to negate the value of free-form gaming. I would suggest that it never will be. (More on this in a future post.) There has been some debate over issues related to the last part of Bloomfield's remark above, and in the 50's and 60's several researchers (Guetzkow and Hermann are the two I can think of offhand) used inexperienced participants in games to study various aspects of crisis behavior, then tried to generalize conclusions based on a number of runs of the same game. Whether or not those efforts are considered to have produced valid results, exercises designed as experiments in that way bore little resemblance to the high-level games Bloomfield is basing his conclusion on. It is reasonable to agree that given Bloomfield's type of political game, he is correct in asserting that inexperienced participants who do not have carefully calibrated internal models of the world situation would not produce particularly meaningful policy-oriented results.

Among the points Bloomfield makes that have a special relevance to the epistemology of gaming is this:

Games do not predict future events or policy outcomes and can be misleading for specific contingency planning purposes. But they can indicate in detail how a future situation might develop and, even more important, why. A little-noticed fact is that in such games he controlling prediction has already been made: the situation the players face is not of their making, but rather is decided by the game designer. Both MIT and government games relied on scenarios prepared by experts asked to depict a specified future situation in a way that would be accepted by other experts as plausible. A prediction was thereby made that partially determined the game results. Thus, such POLEXes have been biased by game designers, whether for experimental, bureaucratic, or merely frivolous reasons.

These remarks remind me of some of H.A. DeWeerd's concerns about the contextual basis for scenarios, previously discussed here.

Although Bloomfield argues that "In a properly designed POLEX, a knowledgeable non-national can often approximate the policy options likely to be considered by another country's decisionmakers," he also notes that:

Given our national tendency to ascribe Western "rational" mindsets to others, crossing cultural barriers to investigate probable foreign reactions is a valuable and neglected use of gaming. A comparable value derives from putting military officers in the shoes of civilians and vice versa. (A survey of several hundred officials who participated in MIT games reported "role-exchange" as the most useful aspect of the games.)

I suppose that the idea here is that worthwhile results can be generated by non-nationals playing a country's decisionmakers, but only if there is an attempt to understand the cultural context in which those decisionmakers would operate. That may be an element, in Bloomfield's thinking, of proper POLEX design.



Paul Bracken (professor of both political science and management at Yale) contributed an article titled "Deterrence, Gaming, and Game Theory." Among other things, this article includes a short discussion of the distinction between gaming and game theory. This is an issue, because there is a tendency to lump the two together, which is part of the problem with gaming terminology. While Bracken's distinction relies on a rather specific definition of "gaming," it illustrates the difference between the two very well:

Gaming and game theory are sometimes confused with each other, because of their similar names. Gaming refers to an exercise in which opposing teams of human players are confronted with a situation or problem and work out responses to the problem and to the moves of the opposing team. The use of human players to simulate specific political or military decisionmakers is the key to gaming. Such role playing gives the game its richness while distinguishing it from a mathematical model or computer simulation. However, models and simulations often are included in political-military games as supporting tools to facilitate human decisionmaking. When there is extensive use of such models and simulations in a role-playing game, or when computerized communication and control systems are included, the entire exercise is sometimes referred to as a "man-machine simulation."

Game theory is a body of primarily mathematical theory concerning decisionmaking. Although often applied to real problems, game theory needs no justification of practicality. It offers a useful vocabulary for making subtle distinctions and precise definitions about phenomena that arise in gaming and decisionmaking.

Despite this important distinction, Bracken highlights the ways in which gaming and game theory can support each other as analytic tools. Both are tools dealing with the study of strategic interaction, and it is no accident that game theorists like Thomas Schelling and Martin Shubik (and presumably Bracken himself) were drawn to the study of gaming.

When many interacting moves are extended over time, the details of information processing, communication, decentralization, and sequencing are of the highest importance in carrying out a strategy. Gaming, especially with a large number of participants on each side, can make this process transparent. This is less likely when strategic analysis is compacted into verbal stories that rely on a handful of words like "counterforce" and "countervalue."

Specifically, Bracken recommends large-scale games that can encompass the complexity of interactions within the nuclear command and control structure: "The play of a large political-military exercise points to the importance of process, informational patterns, and institutional structure." These are precisely the points he felt needed most examination within the deterrence context. Today's context is greatly different from the nuclear confrontation of 1984, but the utility of large scale games for examining organizational/institutional factors would seem to remain. Bracken was skeptical of pol-mil crisis games that only included a few participants for their lack of emphasis on institutions, at least if they resulted in overly complicated or intricate plans for nuclear warfighting that did not take communication and organizational issues into account.



Garry Brewer (another professor of political science as well as management at Yale) contributed an article titled "Child of Neglect: Crisis Gaming for Politics and War." As might be expected from the title, this is a defense of the crisis game as an analytic tool, and a call for its increased use after a decade of very limited application.

These games never prove anything in a narrow scientific sense. They help to portray the complexities of international conflict; their role-playing aspects provide insights into the special problems of command and control; and they are important educational experiences, providinng participants an opportunity to become aware of facts associated with possible conflicts. Discovery is emphasized and highly valued. Positions, expectations, perceptions, facts, and procedures typically are challenged and improved as the game proceeds. Controllers and referees, who are often experts in particular areas, may question a decision or prevent individuals from making certain moves, but their actions are also open to challenge and debate. Thus, imagination and innovation play central roles in the drama of the manual game. The game also allows players to challenge the initiating scenario, including its explicit and implicit assumptions.

In discussing the original pol-mil crisis games of the 50's and 60's, Bracken notes that:

Political-military games directly addressed a number of important questions:
1) What political options could be imagined in light of the military situations portrayed, and what likely consequences would each have? How, in other words, is force related to political ends?
2) Could political inventiveness be fostered by having those actually responsible assume their roles in a controlled, gamed environment? Would the quality of political ideas stimulated be as good or better than those garnered by more conventional means?
3) Could the game identify particularly important, but poorly understood, topics and questions for further study and resolution? What discoveries flow from this type of analysis that might not from other forms and methods?
4) Could the game sensitize responsible officials to make potential decisions more realistic, especially with respect to likely political and policy consequences?

The flexibility and transparency of the scenario and its relevant assumptions in the crisis gaming technique is particularly important to Bracken:

It is not widely appreciated, but all computer-bassed models and games have embedded scenarios and associated assumptions. The technical problem, however, is that changing scenarios or assumptions means changing many complex instructions contained in the model's embedded codes - something no model builder relishes, especially considering the probable headaches he has already suffered in getting the device to run.

Finally, Bracken makes a necessary point about maintaining a broader view of analysis, incorporating whatever techniques best suit the material, while remaining open to alternative approaches:

A fundamental purpose of manual gaming is to encourage creative, innovative thinking about problems that defy treatment with more conventional analytic approaches and methods. This basic goal has not been achieved to the extent that it could and should be. Furthermore, political-military crisis games are best perceived as key elements in a generalized problem solving process. At present, the analytic community shows an unfortunate tendency to believe that a specific model or analysis will provide answers to a given problem. This is unfortunate for several reasons. The most essential: any given analysis or model can represent only one version and vision of reality. More is needed, and the inherent strength of the manual game in this respect calls it to our attention.

Lloyd Hoffman, Jr. worked at the War Gaming and Simulation Center at NDU, which I assume was replaced by the National Strategic Gaming Center (discussed previously here) at some point, but I haven't looked into the history. Suffice to say, there is no entity with that name at present. His contribution was titled "Defense War Gaming," and it provides a survey of what sort of gaming activity was going on in the Defense Department in 1984. While this is of great historical interest, I won't quote him at length here on that subject. Hoffman covers a wider scope of war gaming than the other authors in the series, delving into field exercises, tactical models, and other such areas.

DeLeon: Scenario Designs, an Overview

More from RAND. There has been surprisingly little written about scenario design, and the best piece I have found so far is Peter deLeon's Scenario Designs, an Overview. It's not even 20 pages, and it was written in 1973, but it covers a lot of important ground. And it's available for free online in .pdf format.

Some points I found particularly relevant:

"Although the political/military game can portray a nation's response as the result of the interplay between a number of actors... it cannot hope to capture the full richness of the bureaucratic models that have been increasingly coming to the fore... [he specifically mentions Graham Allison's Models II and III, the Organizational Behavior and Governmental Politics models from Essence of Decision, which I hope to discuss in more detail in a future post].... However, it can help isolate the decision process from extraneous bureaucratic noise."

DeLeon also describes two ways the control team can involve the participants in the action of the scenario. The first, which he calls the "scenario goad," utilizes the scenario to place the teams in a decision setting where they are in effect forced to act. This forecloses options the teams might have had earlier in a crisis, and posits the building crisis as a part of the scenario itself. The second, which he calls the "control goad," turns decision making over to the teams in the earlier stages of a crisis, allowing them more freedom of action. However, if a team proves to be too "reticent or cautious" this requires the control team to "structure and manipulate the game environment in order to provide... incentives" for the team to act in such a way as to advance the game situation. I suppose the literary analogy here is that the "scenario goad" is starting the participants' game experience in media res, while the "control goad" is more of an ab ovo beginning. DeLeon sees the "scenario goad" as a more useful tool for less skilled or less knowledgeable participants (he mentions university students), while more skilled/knowledgeable participants (professionals) might "bring enough prior knowledge to the game that they can promote their own actions and, with the prompting of control, intensify the crisis."

One possibility DeLeon mentions is providing "a menu of options or actions that a team might choose to exercise while playing the game. The explicitness of these 'handles' is largely dependent upon the sophistication of the players. However... the scenarist must be careful not to bias his scenario unconsciously so as to make some options more attractive than the others. Also, such a menu might possibly limit a team's capability and incentive to devise new and novel options. That is, the scenario should present a situation that permits - indeed, encourages - the exploration of a wide variety of levers, old and new."

For a short paper, there's a lot here.

Jones: On Free-Form Gaming

Another RAND note, this time from 1985. William Jones wrote On Free-Form Gaming based on his decades of experience working on gaming at RAND.

This is a 55 page document, but it is so dense with practical insights into gaming procedures that it is almost impossible to summarize adequately. Anyone looking for a better understanding of gaming techniques is well advised to find a copy somehow. It is not available for free online at this time, but it is available through interlibrary loan for those with access. The price at RAND is steep for 55 pages ($20.70), but quite possibly worth it.

Jones focused mainly on two-team games, like the classic crisis games (mentioned previously here and here, but his suggestions and insights pertain to any team structure, and he discussed several alternative structures in the course of the note. One interesting detail is that his vision of free-form gaming involved set move periods, requiring each team to produce a comprehensive set of instructions by the end of the move period. There was no opportunity to take action on the part of the teams (besides making specific requests for information to the control team) during the move period, meaning that "game time" effectively did not advance during the teams' deliberations. After the move period, the control team would assess what the timeframe and situation would be at the start of the next move period. That required them to assemble all of the teams' move papers, decide what the results of the requested actions would be, decide on when to advance the game time until (based on their view of the next interesting point for study), and produce new scenario papers for the next move period.

In contrast, using computer systems (like the ICONS project's web-based software, but more on this another time), exercises today can more easily allow teams the option for action during moves, implicitly or explicitly advancing "game time" during the move period. That probably creates a very different atmosphere within the teams. It also opens the door to diplomatic interaction between teams, something very difficult to manage if move orders are only processed at the end of each move period.

This is an excellent paper. Rather than try to go into further detail now, I'll refer to it when discussing things in the future, since there is something related to almost every aspect of pol/mil gaming.

UPDATE: Alert reader persis notes in the comments that this paper is now available for free download at RAND. Go get it!

More on Crisis Games

To continue the thoughts in the previous post, Crisis Games 27 Years Later contains a number of criticisms of the gaming form by Robert Levine, to which Thomas Schelling and William Jones respond.

Some of Levine's concerns:

Gaming could lend a sense that a plausible scenario is in fact probable. This could take place by virtue of the chosen, simulated scenario becoming more "real" in the minds of the participants than all of the other, unexplored possibilities. (More on cognitive biases like this one in another post soon, once I finish the paper I'm reading now)

A combination of "ersatz history" (in the form of scenarios that depart greatly from present day events) and "ersatz people" (since game players do not share the same characteristics as the individuals they are simulating) introduce biases to the gaming process that compromise its utility in generating worthwhile hypotheses.

The results of games may be used as evidence, even when they have no evidentiary value. Specifically: "If a game result appears in language which can be read as a confirmed policy conclusion, there is a substantial chance that it will be so read."


For a more recent view of some similar issues, Robert Rubel's "The Epistemology of War Gaming" (mentioned in this previous post) talks about a broader category of games, and also has steps in mind to try and address some of these methodological challenges, rather than simply advocating that gaming be abandoned as a research tool.


Rather than enumerate Schelling and Jones' replies to these and other arguments point by point, here are a few examples of their ideas (the paper is well worth reading in its entirety):

Schelling defines games as necessarily involving "at least two separate decision centers... neither of which is privy to the other's planning and arguing, neither of which has complete access to the other's intelligence or background information, neither of which has any direct way of knowing everything that the other is deciding on." This definition excludes many of the exercises we would categorize as games, and includes many that do not appear to be games at all, but this is because Schelling is focused on the strategic interaction between the two (or more) decision centers:

"What this mode of organization can do that can not otherwise be done is to generate the phenomena of understanding and misunderstanding, perception and misperception, bargaining, demonstrations, dares and challenges, accommodation, coercion and intimidation, conveyance of intent, and uncertainty about what each other has already done or decided on. There are some things that just cannot be done by a single person or by a team that works together."

"One is to judge how 'obvious' something is. An analogy is the 'hidden face' in the picture. If I draw a face with a hidden picture, there is no way for me to tell how hard it is to see the face except to show the picture to somebody. I can't not see the picture because I put it there, and the hidden face has the quality that once you've seen it it is awfully hard to recapture your innocence and not see it."

Jones responds to the charge of "ersatz history" thus (keep in mind that he was writing in 1964):

"[P]erfectly plausible, useful, and not improbable game scenarios of a situation three or four years in the future can be had by simply initiating a game using today's newspapers -- interjecting only tomorrow's equipment. Arab-Israeli controversy has existed for some time and it seems probable that it will be in existence in 1970. Turkey and Greece have not seen eye-to-eye on the Cyprus situation for a considerable period and, unfortunately, this controversy is likely to persist.... Notice here that I am not saying that games, played from scenarios which are extrapolations of today's problems, are perfect for determining tomorrow's force posture and weapons characteristics. I am saying that I can think of worse procedures (re-fighting the last war, for example) and I know of no other way in which I have even such a limited amount of confidence."

There is a good deal more in this paper than I can tackle in a blog post, but many of the ideas and concerns expressed resonate today, which is why RAND reprinted it in 1991, 27 years after it was written.

Crisis Games and RAND

In 1964, Robert Levine, Thomas Schelling, and William Jones circulated a series of drafts through the RAND Corporation internal mail system, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of crisis gaming. In 1991, feeling that the issues laid out remained relevant, Levine republished the entire exchange as a RAND paper: Crisis Games 27 Years Later: Plus C'est Deja Vu. RAND has released this paper (along with some others from their 50 years of research and policy memoranda) for free in pdf form. It's well worth reading in its entirety. Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005, and his defense of crisis gaming as a technique is fascinating.

RAND did a lot of pioneering work in crisis gaming, which seems to have come on the scene during the Cold War as a way of examining the issues surrounding crises between the US and the USSR (I will confirm this at some point in the future, but the earliest references I have seen so far to crisis gaming date to the 1950's). The study of crisis was a priority, given the risks of nuclear war that attended a misstep. The various Berlin crises, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the surprise attack that began the Korean War were all influential in shaping the view that crisis management was an important skill to develop. Cold War crises had some very appealing features when it comes to gaming: there were two main adversaries whose interactions (due to their superpower status) were much more important than the roles of any other states (whose actions could be devised by the control team), the stakes in any given confrontation were high and the time frames often short (due to the presence of large nuclear arsenals), which ensured that the highest level decision makers would be involved, superseding normal policymaking structures, and the novelty of the nuclear standoff, with unprecedented destructive power involved, which gave a sense to policy theorists that all bets were off and that this type of crisis event needed to be studied outside the context of previous conventional military confrontations. This last point was also a major argument made by the newly ascendant civilian policy analysts in favor of rethinking conflict in ways opposed by the military establishment.