Review of WarGames (1983) by Gordon C — 28 Feb 2009

I'm sure it's nice to think that the USA could almost be destroyed by some geeky kid pushing the wrong buttons... but then, unfortunately most of those who suffer the ill effects of war are not usually those responsible for starting it.

Leaving that aside, it does seem a bit of a credibility stretch that any nation would turn over the control of its military capability to a machine designed for playing strategy games. Perhaps it was the Reagan Star Wars initiative which inspired this (and some other, similar) film(s). Maybe people just didn't realise back then that Star Wars was never going to work, anyway.

In any case, the movie's conclusion doesn't quite make sense, it seems to me. It is possible to win a game of tic-tac-toe, provided your opponent is foolish enough. So WOPR ought to conclude that it is possible to win Global Thermonuclear War, provided the enemy is foolish enough. Given that it's makers handed over their nuclear arsenal to a machine capable of being hacked by some geeky kid, they must be pretty stupid. So, it stands to reason that the enemy might well be just as stupid. So WOPR should conclude that it could win the war, and go ahead and fire those bombs!