The Gaming Lab at CNAS

From armed conflicts to global pandemics, military strategists and policymakers use gaming to gain insights into their most challenging problems. Games help develop and test strategies, support effective decision making, and communicate vital lessons to key stakeholders.

The Gaming Lab at CNAS, situated within the Defense Program, develops and runs innovative unclassified games and exercises on a range of challenging national security issues. An industry leader, 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 provides 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.

Wargaming Lines of Effort

Operational Wargaming

The Gaming Lab runs unclassified wargames to examine future warfare in critical regions, develop innovative operational concepts, assess new strategies, and explore novel scenarios. Recent operational wargames include:

Bad Blood. Prepared for the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this game explored how the United States could employ diplomatic, military, and economic tools to deter and defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The game produced insights as to how the United States could strengthen deterrence to avert conflict and uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Avoiding the Brink. This game series examined how China’s expanding nuclear arsenal could impact the risk of nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict over Taiwan. The games highlighted credibility challenges associated with nuclear escalation management and observed how geographic asymmetries could favor China’s efforts to engage in nuclear coercion.
Dangerous Straits. Filmed by NBC’s Meet the Press, this game educated the general public about the risks of a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan and how such a conflict could unfold. The game highlighted areas of potential risk in a future conflict and identified steps the United States and its allies and partners could take to strengthen deterrence and, if needed, defeat Chinese aggression.

Strategy Games

The Gaming Lab employs strategy games to explore critical national security issues and identify solutions that draw on several dimensions of national power. This includes games focused on political-military and non-military aspects of competition and conflict. Past strategy games include:

Risk and Responsibility. This game series explored how Iran might leverage weapons of mass destruction to counter U.S. interests and how the United States could leverage diplomatic, information, military and economic tools to counter, deter, or de-escalate the Iranian threat.
When the Chips Are Down. This game examined how China could exert influence over Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to destabilize cross-Strait relations, and identified American and Taiwanese tools available to counter China’s coercive activities.

Expert Elicitation Exercises

The Gaming Lab develops and runs scenario and tabletop exercises, simulations, and red team analysis to examine critical security issues and educate audiences through subject matter expert elicitation. Past expert elicitation exercises include:

A Deadly Game. This game leveraged public participation to explore a crisis and conflict in the East China Sea. The game educated participants on a wide variety of challenges military leaders could face in such a scenario, ranging from communications and logistics disruptions to attrition of air and naval forces.
Locked Horns Game. This game examined the impact of economic domain measures in a conflict over Taiwan on China, the United States, and the global economy. The game provided insights for how the United States could maximize the effects of its economic measures.

The Gaming Lab Team

Becca Wasser

Lead
Stacie Pettyjohn

Senior Fellow and Director, Defense Program
Andrew Metrick

Fellow, Defense Program
Hannah Dennis

Research Associate, Defense Program
Philip Sheers

Research Assistant, Defense Program
Molly Campbell

Program Administrator, Defense Program
Dr. Alec D. Barker

Former Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Principal, MITRE
Philip Breedlove

Member, CNAS Board of Advisors, Distinguished Professor, Sam Nunn School at Georgia Tech
Robin Dickey

Adjunct Associate Fellow, Defense Program
Billy Fabian

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Analyst, Govini
Greg Grant

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Principal, MITRE’s National Security Sector
Dr. Erik Lin-Greenberg

Adjunct Fellow, Defense Program, Assistant Professor of Political Science, MIT
Admiral Cecil Haney, USN (Ret.)

Member, CNAS Board of Directors, Former Commander, US STRATCOM
General Mike Holmes, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)

Former Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Advisor, The Roosevelt Group
LTG Anthony R. "Tony" Ierardi, USA (Ret.)

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Rebellion Defense
Jennifer McArdle

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Senior Director for Defense Programs and the Deputy Chief Learning Officer at CAE USA
Dr. ED McGrady

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program, Principal, MonksHood Media LLC
Sarah Mineiro

Former Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program
Admiral John Richardson, USN (Ret)

Member, CNAS Board of Directors
Peter Schwartz
Tom Shugart

Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program
Sarah Smedley

Former Adjunct Senior Fellow
Robert O. Work

Senior Counselor for Defense and Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security

The Gaming Lab at CNAS

Wargaming Lines of Effort

The Gaming Lab Team

Recent Publications: