Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: It also should ideally expose people to new ways of thinking and new ideas and how you process information, where you really get a lot of the value of wargaming, which is the safe to fail environment for making decisions.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: This is the Convergence the Army's Mad Scientist Podcast. I'm Matt Sanispert, Deputy Director of Mad Scientist, and I'll be joined in just a moment by the TRADOC G2 Director of Wargaming, Rob Tabor. Mad Scientist is a US army initiative that continually explores the evolution of warfare, challenges assumptions, and collaborates with academia, industry and government.
You can connect with us on social media me madssci and don't forget to subscribe to the blog the Mad Scientist Laboratory at Madsci Blog Tradoc Army Mil on today's episode, we're talking with Mr. Luke Miller, undergraduate at the College of William and Mary and director of the William Mary Wargaming Lab. We'll be talking with Luke about the value of wargaming as part of higher education, designing games for students as well as defense partners, and emulating an accurate and realistic Red Team. As always, the views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Army Futures Command, or the Training and Doctrine Command.
Let's get started.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Luke, thanks so much for being here today.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: And I also want to introduce Mr. Rob Taber, who is the TRADOC G2's director of wargaming here. This is Rob's first podcast as well. He's going to be my co host today. Rob, welcome to the show.
[00:01:29] Speaker D: Thank you, Matt. Really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to it. And thanks for being here, Luke as well.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: All right, so Luke, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience here, tell them who you are, what you do, and then kind of how you came to the wargaming lab.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: So I am the director of the Wargaming Lab at the College of William Mary through the whole of Government center of Excellent. I'm currently an undergrad at the college. Previously I've been on the developer side.
So my first introduction to wargaming in abstract was really through board games and war games that you might have played like Axis and Allies, Risk and all those sorts of things without really understanding that that does actually play a role into new, more formalized war games, which then I was exposed to through the Alexander Hamilton Society Student Leadership Conference, in which I had the pleasure of playing Hegemony, which was created by the Rand Corporation. And, and I really enjoyed that. I Was aware there was a lab founded at the college by our previous director, Sophia Valle, and was totally sure the process to get involved in that my freshman year. Come the fall of my sophomore year, I applied, got in and began the process of working for the lab. And it was really a great experience. We've done a lot of interesting work, specifically in the. In the last war game that we.
That we created, which was really great.
[00:02:49] Speaker D: So I'd like to pull on that a little bit. Can you describe the William and Mary Wargaming Lab? Like, what is it, what does it do and who does it work with?
Kind of what's a day to day for you going into the lab as the director?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So the William Mary Wargaming lab is the first fully undergraduate led wargaming design initiative in the country as far as we know.
We create war games and games for national security policy analysis for career professionals as well as other partners. So before my time, we created one for our faculty advisor, retired Air Force General General Matthews. And I'd like to thank him for all of the support he's given us at the lab. And then we created a game for Dr. Kerry park to support her research on joint military exercises in the Indo Pacific region.
So that was the one we did most recently on influence primacy. So not a traditional war game, but a game for national security policy analysis.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: And so you guys are designing the games, Are you designing them from the ground up? I mean, are you building the boards, building the rules, the gameplay? Or do you use games just to teach tactics and techniques? How does that work?
[00:04:00] Speaker A: So we designed them from the ground up, including everything from the research of the content of what exactly want to make the game. Not necessarily the research that we're supporting or anything like that. That often exists in the case of Doct park, that existed beforehand. But we had to do underlying research for game mechanics and other information that existed there and then all the way up through production. Although we have great support through the whole government center and all of their on their production side, who really helped us out with kind of the nitty gritty of making the cards and producing the boards. But a lot of that design side also goes on participants and former lab members and leadership.
[00:04:42] Speaker D: So it sounds like it's a very interactive process that you have.
What do you see the value of this coming from the standpoint of higher education? So you're doing this at the College of William and Mary. You talked a lot about research just now. How is that? What's the interplay between academic studies? I Assume there's game theory involved and what you're doing in the lab on a day to day basis.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So on the academic front, I think we have a lot of underlying and diverse perspectives of from whatever we poll, we people who are, you know, government majors, international relations, Chinese studies, econ, data science, business, even, even a physics major. So it's a, it's a broad spectrum of people that go into this and I think that feeds into different perspectives where you really get a lot of the value of war gaming, which is the safe to fail environment for making decisions where you're not expending large amounts of resources or lives or anything of that sort. They're safe to make decisions that could lead in failure. And that's really something that I think wargaming does very well. And I think that's where a lot of value lies in this applied learning environment.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: So I ask a follow up to that. So we heard that, you know, you build these games, you have customers that you build the games for and they have a certain goal that they want to achieve with the board game. But what about the players? Do you use the games to teach the players something or is it ultimately just for the customer to get that end goal?
[00:06:09] Speaker A: So that will depend based on the type of game. So it's not necessarily 100% one way or the other. Certainly I would like to think that the participants, no matter if the goal is purely research, gain something from the experience. That is one of the goals, is that it is a learning experience for those involved as well. And I've heard kind of a diversity of perspectives. I can speak a little bit more on our previous game as far as how that went. But yes, the goal is that everyone kind of learns something, especially as the participants, and ideally comes with things with a slightly new perspective or a new way of thinking about things that they didn't otherwise.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: So you said that you're designing these games, you're doing them for a customer in most instances. But when you're building the games, what makes a good war game? Because the game has to be fun to play or nobody's going to play it. Obviously the ultimate goal is to find something out or to teach something. But in your opinion, what makes a good war game?
[00:07:01] Speaker A: I think you got a little bit about that just by the question. I think has to be a little bit fun to play at least. And going further, I think what makes a really good war game is a. It has to have a degree of realism. You know, we don't want it to echo the exact way of thinking and things are. Because that's kind of, you know, getting feeding back into yourself information wise. But it should remain quite grounded in reality or the ways of real processes.
It also should ideally expose people to new ways of thinking and new ideas and how you process information to think about, be safe to think about things in new Wells kind of mentioned that safe to fail environment. I think it really has to ideally open up your mind a little bit to think about problems in a new way. And again that's, I think where a lot of value of wargaming exists is you have these ideas that you have written out on paper, maybe that you have in your head and then you're forced to actually execute them against costs and benefits that a good game will give you these options or dilemmas. Then you have to pick and kind of experience that that dilemma and that tension for yourself. And that I think is where a lot of value lies.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: What types of games do you build? So there's obviously several, you know, you could have scenario based where you respond to a, to a prompt, tabletop, large maps, things like that, or traditional board games. Do you focus on one specific type that you think has benefit or do you, do you do just a variety of different types of games?
[00:08:25] Speaker A: So I'm going to give a little bit more of a personal answer here that I prefer the, at least for on our side, the more tabletop style I think that gives a more unique experience and perspective that we can sometimes elicit in comparison to I would say larger scale exercises done by other organizations that are more their bread and butter. The previous game we did was definitely more of that board game style, Silent tides on influence, primacy, where there were cards and, and die. So a lot of the things that I think people think about when it comes to war games and, and such. So that was more of that focus. And then I've designed, co designed with our former director two micro games that again were kind of that more like small board game format which was pretty, pretty fun to, to make and play. Although the lessons are a lot scaled down as well when you get in those smaller micro games.
[00:09:19] Speaker D: So I'd like to pull back towards, you know, as part of game design and the academic process behind it.
What role does data play in your war games and not just in building as well as coming out of the back end of it and doing assessments. Is it more quantitative, qualitative or a little bit of both?
[00:09:36] Speaker A: I think that quantitative data, we don't really collect it in, in precision like this is how many actions these players did, at least previously. Quantitative data on the design end I think feeds into more qualitative abstractions more frequently. And that's typically how we do things. But our focus is a little bit more qualitative, I would say overall more quantitative I think leans more into that M and S modeling simulation styles rather than your more traditional war games, which will have maybe quantitative elements but tend to be more abstracted for the more human qualitative element.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: So obviously we are the Tradoc G2 and our focus is the threat. You know, we're looking at what our adversary is doing. So when you're making a war game, how do you ensure that you have an accurate and realistic threat or a red team, where do you pull that data from?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: I can really speak to the one we did last year that, that I spent more time on and that I think got into. We had a simulated red force. So it wasn't an actual person, but rather like a series of cards with a degree of randomness just to try and test the blue. The real focus was on really testing blue's response to red and less so red's response overall. Although I have been aware that in general that is something that is kind of hard to deal with in general as we're trying to predict the actions of our rivals and competitors and threats that are hard to understand because we do not have a full insight into the, to the mind of Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or any of our other adversaries, which makes things a little bit difficult.
[00:11:18] Speaker D: So you've just spoke to. What I struggle with every day in my day to day job is how do we emulate, you know, the Chinese army, for example, when we have limited amounts of intelligence on them and, and things like that. So stepping back from the academic side of war gaming and back into more of generalist, you know, just being a fan of war gaming, how do you see it evolving over the next 10 years? Do you see for example, incorporation of more artificial intelligence or other technologies across the way? Or do you see the stable kind of board games are the core and there's just add ons to it from the side?
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'd like to preface by saying I've been involved in this field professionally or semi professionally for only around two years in comparison to many people who've dedicated decades and their whole lives to this pursuit.
But what I can say is I think there's a lot of discussion around the future, particularly of new technologies like artificial intelligence and how that plays a role into Adjudication and design and all these features as we seek to wrestle with that, not just in war gaming, but also throughout all sorts of disciplines. And I think there's a lot of debate of the use of artificial intelligence in this respect because there's controversy on one side that it can make things a lot faster on the adjudication end. So in decision making of player actions.
But it also is hard to understand how it comes to these decisions. Large language models are inherently probabilistic. So I think there's some concerns that you could get, you know, other problems of losing that human element. So it's a tough balance to both integrate new technology that has uses for well being and also for balancing that still human element. Because is human decision making at the end of the day.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Have you guys started to incorporate any of that advanced technology into your games yet? Are you still doing everything sort of, for lack of a better term, by hand?
[00:13:06] Speaker A: We do most of it by hand. Actually closer to all of it. I think the place that it has a little bit more of a role is in kind of the more graphic design element. Although it's not really artificial intelligence, some of it kind of is and there's different use cases with that. But we have not used it particularly much if really you can consider using it at all. Just because we want to focus on really building up those skills that play into war gaming and design without having the ability to use something that is going to augment it. It's going to be slower of course, as with doing anything without AI, but I think you'll gain a lot more.
And again, this doesn't just apply to war gaming. I think this is a general lesson that a lot of different institutions and people are asking and dealing with.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: No, I think that makes sense. I agree with. I want to talk about wargaming and we're seeing it here in the army is going through kind of a resurgence.
Why do you think that is? What do you attribute this to? Are you seeing any trends that you're observing when you watch players play your games and as you support your customers?
[00:14:08] Speaker A: I think again, no means an expert. I'm fairly young in the field. But what I can say, I think that the resurgence of great power competition has played a really large role in this resurgence. Particularly because it's a useful way to abstract all of the facets that go into this.
It's a challenge that I think these kind of decision making, you're dealing with another actor that has presumably their own set of goals.
That kind of makes it not necessarily easier, but perhaps a better fit, an easier fit than counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, although there are certainly games that focus on that and games have been expanding. I think we've seen that as a trend as well to include other facets of things as the discipline has also evolved. So I think it's really a combination of, that is more open perspective, perspectives on the uses of this as well as the resurgence of great power competition, particularly with China, and how that plays into our decision making, how we want to think about things. We're thinking about near peer war in a way, a frequency that I don't think was as discussed 20 years ago or so, which again leads itself to war gaming. Also more of that influence style, national security gaming, which again was not something that we had discussed to the same level really since the Cold War in this broad spectrum approach.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: I think you're right. You know, the change in focus kind of builds that demand for a different type of, a different type of approach. And I think war gaming fits that.
Before we get to the end of our big questions here, you mentioned a couple times the war game you guys had used, Silent Tides. I think I have the name right. Can you tell us anything about that? What the game is about, how it plays, what you got out of it?
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So Silent Tides was an influence primacy game for national security policy analysis created in support of a postdoctoral fellow who was at the college. She since moved on and her focus is on joint military exercises. So Silent Tide's premise was that the PRC People's Republic of China did a joint military exercise with all of asean. So that's even traditional American partners and allies such as the Philippines, and Thailand. So the players are then put in a position where they have to regain influence primacy over a couple of states of their choosing. And they have wedges thrown away by a simulated red force. And they're given a series of cards to handle these problems, ranging with actions from military sales to diplomatic efforts, informational efforts, economic interactions that have different scales and different probabilities of occurring as well as different timelines occurring. So players are put between a dilemma of both resource constraints, economies of scale in terms of like different actions. So like your dime, diplomacy, information, military, economic, as well as your time constraints. So you have to make these decisions on a time frame as well. So that kind of puts the players in that position where they want to gain influence over these particular states that China's also trying to assimilated. PRC is trying to degrade the influence.
[00:17:10] Speaker D: Of so if that's what you've done in the past, can I ask what are you working on this upcoming academic year?
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Without getting too much into it, we're working on space related activities. Not just as space is a means in which conflict is occurred through, so through your traditional ISR and communications and such, but also a realm of. So there's increasing competition in space. There's a lot of risks that occur with that and it's a interesting field as we explore further, particularly as that starts to inform a lot of decision making. We've seen a lot of interest in space increase, I think, through the past year with things like Golden Dome, increased space ISR as well as just the increased commercialization of space as well. Now, not all of that will 100% be reflected in the game. Everything is still very, very tentative on that end. But in abstract space, it's going to be a space focused game.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Very cool. I think that's a great, a great area to get into at the moment.
So, Luke, those are the big questions we had for you. Rob's going to transition us now to our rapid fire questions. These are the questions we asked to all of our guests. They're always the same. Although there is a bonus question today. It just helps us understand a little bit, helps our audience understand a little bit about who the person is we're talking to.
[00:18:27] Speaker D: So here's the rapid fire questions and I promise that doesn't mean I'm just going to bam, bam, bam, hit you with them, because I asked Matt, since this is my first podcast, is this like the interrogation technique, rapid fire? And he said, no, be nice. So the first one I have for you, what trender technology? Since we were talking through AI and you were really talking about space, which is fascinating and everything that comes along with that and exploring that new domain. What trender technology keeps you up at night? What do you think about when you're off time?
[00:18:55] Speaker A: I think the easy answer there in abstract is kind of AI. Although I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine who's an electrical engineering student. Just trying to say something a little bit unique. I think quantum computing is something very interesting as a pure, if you view it as a pure race, because whoever gets quantum computing first gets immense leverage in cryptology and code breaking from like a national security perspective. That's incredibly worrying. The ability of one side to then leverage a power reduction of time to break your codes. That's, that's, that's incredibly worrying.
And a race that I think China is also very interested in winning. So something that is very important for us to continue.
[00:19:35] Speaker D: Then the next one would be tell us something about you that most people wouldn't know. Let's get to know Luke Miller a little bit.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: So I. That most people probably don't know in general would be. I'm a fencer. So I fence FA at the.
On the club team at the College of William Mary. And I've been doing it since I was around 13. That's. That's something that I don't think is totally known, but I enjoy it a lot. It's a great sport.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: So, Luke, you're the second fencer we've had on here. And I think, if memory serves right, Sebastian Bay, who was also a war gamer, is a fencer as well up at Georgetown. So I think at this point we have to have a William Mary Georgetown fencing competition. All right, so stay tuned.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: I actually think I ever heard that in that podcast and I believe he fences F A as well, but I could be wrong.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: All right, it's on then.
[00:20:24] Speaker D: You're following in great footsteps with Sebastian.
So here in the office we have a daily movie quote trivia event. So we're big into our movies here at Tradoc G2.
So what is your favorite movie and why?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: So my favorite movie is the Big Short, which is based off of the Michael Lewis book on the group of investors that kind of figure out the 2008 recession is about to happen before it does. I think I really like it because it's just a group of people who then go and figure out that there's this massive calamity approaching the global financial system and kind of the problem solving portion of that as they try and figure things out and they kind of uncover that the, that the problem lies a lot deeper and is a lot more pervasive and larger than they initially think. And it's kind of the series of events of all these people who come up with it not really on their own because it's a lot of they get from Michael Burry. But yeah, that's one of my favorite movies. And it kind of inspired me to really pursue an econ major, which I should have mentioned. I'm an econ and international relations major, but that was a large part of the econ major choice.
[00:21:27] Speaker D: Okay, now because you're a wargamer, we get to do the bonus question. So thank you, Matt, for the bonus question. We appreciate it.
What is your favorite war game to play and why?
[00:21:36] Speaker A: My favorite war game to play is the Rand Corporation's Game hegemony. I think that game is a ton of fun also very interesting. Kind of focuses on that resource constrained environment. It's a decently long game as far as these more commercial ones go.
I've had the pleasure of playing it twice at the Alexander Hamilton Society Student Leadership Conference. Once as the Islamic Republic of Iran and then once as the United States. Vastly preferred the United States as we should. But it's interesting because you're given these problems where you have to deal with a variety of crises around the world with limited resources and you have to think ahead. So you have to plan ahead for your limited resources, but you also get these international crises that pop up and you have to deal with. And I think that really illustrates a lot of the difficulty that the United States has as, as a global hegemon of dealing with these different crises, but also balancing against as. The game features a rising China. So I love that game. Not only is it a ton of fun, it really, I think illustrates what a good war game is and gets you to think about things in, in new ways and really challenge a lot of your assumptions.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Outstanding. Luke Miller, Director of the William and Mary War Gaming Lab. Luke, so if people want to get in touch or see what the War Gam Lab is up to, how do they do that?
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Yeah, so we have our website which is on the College of William Mary's website. Then go through whole of Government center and we're one of the the organizations featured there along with Wimcheck and I also want to take that time to thank a lot of our supporters at the college, especially in the whole government center. So Dr. K. Floyd in particular and then you can follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Luke Miller, say undergraduate at William Mary and yeah, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or interest in what the lab does.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: Awesome. Yes. Shout out to Kay Floyd. We're big fans of her here in terms of what she does to help us with our intern program as well. So Luke, awesome conversation today. Thank you for coming and talking to us and bringing to light what the wargaming lab does.
Always happy to work with William and Mary in their internship capacity, but also in the war gaming capacity. You guys are big supporters. We had our wargaming conference at Georgetown last year.
So once again, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having great conversation with us and we hope to see what the wargaming lab is up to in the near future.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah. And I also want to thank you all for Matt and Rob but also TRADOC in general. I attended that conference in November. I've also had the great pleasure of interning twice through the William Mary program at tradoc, which were both great experiences and something I'm incredibly grateful for. So thank you for all the work that you all do and your time and support for undergraduates in general, especially at William Mary. So thank you.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: And you said you're a rising junior?
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Yes, that's correct.
[00:24:18] Speaker C: Two internships already and he's a rising junior. How impressive is that? Great job. All right, Luke Miller, thanks so much for coming on.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Thank you. It was great being here.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Convergence. I'd like to thank our guest, Mr. Luke Miller. You can connect with us on social media ME madsci. And don't forget to subscribe to the blog the Mad Scientist Laboratory at madsci Blog.
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