
The Gaming Lab at CNAS
From armed conflicts to global pandemics, military strategists and policymakers use gaming to gain insights into some of the most challenging problems they face. Games help develop and test strategies, support effective decision-making, and communicate vital lessons to key stakeholders.
The Gaming Lab at CNAS, nested under the Defense Program, develops and runs innovative unclassified games and exercises on a range of challenging national security issues. Drawing on its extensive game design and subject matter expertise, the Gaming Lab develops tailored games along three primary lines of effort: operational wargames, strategy games, and expert elicitation exercises. The Gaming Lab conducts rigorous post-game analysis, identifies key insights from its games, and makes concrete policy-relevant recommendations.
To learn more about using wargaming or similar methodologies to explore difficult problems, contact the Gaming Lab at gaminglab@cnas.org.
Primary Lines of Effort
Operational Wargaming
The Gaming Lab at CNAS runs unclassified wargames to examine critical operational issues in Asia, Europe, and beyond. These games may be used to develop innovative operational concepts, test new strategies or capabilities, or to explore novel scenarios. Examples of past operational wargames include:
- Exploring how a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan could unfold and the military strategies that China and the United States might choose to adopt to achieve their aims
- Examining whether three different budget-constrained force structures were capable of defeating large scale aggression, territorial land-grabs, and gray zone conflicts in the Indo-Pacific and Europe
- Exploring new operational approaches to command and control to improve the U.S. military’s ability to achieve degradation dominance in future conflicts with China and Russia
Strategy Games
The Gaming Lab at CNAS designs custom strategy games that explore critical aspects of national security, ranging across diplomatic, information, military, and economic activities. CNAS also runs political-military games that focus on the non-military aspects of competition and conflict. Examples of past strategy games include:
- Exploring how China could leverage coercive tactics to gain control over Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and shift the balance of power in U.S.-China strategic competition
- Examining how Iran might use chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in the future to control escalation and challenge U.S. interests
- Assessing the implications of proliferated drone technology to state and non-state actors
Expert Elicitation Exercises
The Gaming Lab at CNAS develops and runs scenario and tabletop exercises, simulations, and red team analysis to explore security issues through subject matter expert elicitation. CNAS also uses such exercises to educate audiences about critical problems in defense and national security. Examples of past expert elicitation exercises include:
- A virtual wargame simulating a conflict in the East China Sea
- A scenario exercise exploring economic coercion in the U.S.-China relationship in Asia and Europe
The Gaming Lab Team
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Becca Wasser
Lead
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Stacie Pettyjohn
Senior Fellow and Director, Defense Program
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Andrew Metrick
Fellow, Defense Program
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Hannah Dennis
Research Associate, Defense Program
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Philip Sheers
Research Assistant, Defense Program
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Molly Campbell
Intern, Defense Program
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Dr. Alec D. Barker
Former Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Principal, MITRE
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Philip Breedlove
Member, CNAS Board of Advisors, Distinguished Professor, Sam Nunn School at Georgia Tech
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Robin Dickey
Adjunct Associate Fellow, Defense Program
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Billy Fabian
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Analyst, Govini
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Greg Grant
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Principal, MITRE’s National Security Sector
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Dr. Erik Lin-Greenberg
Adjunct Fellow, Defense Program, Assistant Professor of Political Science, MIT
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Admiral Cecil Haney, USN (Ret.)
Member, CNAS Board of Directors, Former Commander, US STRATCOM
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General Mike Holmes, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Advisor, The Roosevelt Group
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LTG Anthony R. "Tony" Ierardi, USA (Ret.)
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Rebellion Defense
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Jennifer McArdle
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Director for Defense Programs and the Deputy Chief Learning Officer at CAE USA
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Dr. ED McGrady
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Principal, MonksHood Media LLC
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Sarah Mineiro
Former Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program
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Admiral John Richardson, USN (Ret)
Member, CNAS Board of Directors
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Peter Schwartz
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Tom Shugart
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program
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Sarah Smedley
Former Adjunct Senior Fellow
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Robert O. Work
Senior Counselor for Defense and Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security
Recent Publications:
It’s Time to Rethink our Wargames
National security practitioners held several high-profile pandemic wargames and exercises in the years prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. Often, these games eerily predicted e...
Slaughter in the East China Sea
The year is 2030. Chinese troops seize a Japanese island in the South China Sea. Japan dispatches an amphibious task force to retake the island. Soon, U.S. warships and aircra...
A Deadly Game: East China Sea Crisis 2030
On July 22, 2020, audience members played along as the CNAS Defense team and leading experts conducted a virtual wargame in the year 2030, exploring command and information co...
Interactive Tabletop Exercise on the Future of Iran’s Nuclear Program
Nicholas A. Heras, Eric Brewer, Elizabeth Rosenberg, and Ilan Goldenberg lead an interactive tabletop exercise about the future of Iran's nuclear program....
No Safe Harbor
Introduction China is challenging America’s and Japan’s long-standing ability to uphold a peaceful order in the Asia-Pacific region. This is particularly true in the East and ...
Virtual Panel Discussion: Serious Games: How the Pentagon Uses Wargames to Develop Ideas and Inform Decisions
Jun 16, 2020