This Week In Retro: WarGames (1983) (Patreon)

June 3, 1983: Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?

by Diamond Feit

We've all heard the expression "history repeats itself" but as I approach the half-century mark, I must admit I always assumed it would take longer to see certain attitudes refresh themselves. When a boom in technological advancement in my youth brought computers into American homes and automation threatened the job security of millions of laborers, I can remember the pushback. The innovations I viewed as groundbreaking and futuristic frightened a great many people who worried that we as a society were constructing our own replacements.

Yet four decades later, I cannot help but notice that the conversation around artificial intelligence seems rooted in exactly the same mindset. Again, technological advancement has expanded the strength, speed, and reach of computers, this time putting them into the pockets of billions of people around the globe. Not only does this ease of access put people's livelihoods at risk as corporations seek to let chatbots handle writing, illustration, and customer service, but some people even fear that the growth of AI might lead to the end of life itself. Remarkably, this includes tech-savvy individuals who themselves are actively developing AI systems.

Of course, these arguments which I first encountered in the 1980s stretch back even further. Even when a computer required an entire room to function, thinkers openly wondered what might happen should machines grow smarter. Harlan Ellison wrote I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, his tale of a rogue AI wiping out humanity, in 1966. That same year, D.F. Jones' novel Colossus told a similar story about an automated defense system gaining sentience and quickly establishing itself as an authority rather than as a tool; Hollywood later adapted this novel into a 1970 film, Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Given this history of AI-fearing stories, when WarGames opened in theaters 40 years ago this week, it actually represented the latest in a long line of parables about the danger of removing human agency from nuclear conflict. Yet even with the knowledge that WarGames was neither the first nor last film to tackle this topic, it still stands out as a snapshot of America in the early 80s, a film that could not possibly take place in any other era.

WarGames opens with a classic Cold War worst-case scenario of two men locked inside a missile silo who receive an urgent message to launch. They quickly verify their orders as authentic; their mission is clear. Yet when the moment of truth comes, one man refuses to turn his key, even with a gun pointed at his head.

We soon learn that the two men had no idea they were taking part in a training exercise, one meant to test our personnel's readiness in the face of a nuclear crisis. With the results revealing an uncomfortably large percentage of men unwilling to follow their launch orders, Dr. McKittrick at the U.S. Department of Defense proposes a radical solution: Remove the men from the silos. Instead of relying on humans who may falter under pressure, McKittrick argues a computer could execute the president's orders to launch missiles without hesitation.

The film jumps from the heated, high-stakes halls of NORAD to a suburban video arcade where we meet teenager David Lightman furiously firing at aliens in Galaga before running off to class. While clearly bright and resourceful, David has (rightly) grown disdainful of high school, recognizing it as busywork unworthy of his complete attention. The threat of poor grades does not faze him, for he has figured out a foolproof method of gaming the system: He knows how to reliably access the school's computer remotely, giving him the power to freely edit his academic record.

After reading a magazine ad boasting about a lineup of upcoming video games, David decides to engage in cybersnooping so he can play these games before anyone else. The film shows David doing his homework by looking up the software company's address, figuring out the area code and prefix for the phone numbers in that city, then programming his home computer to call every single number in search of his target. Compared to most other films where "hackers" type furiously on a keyboard for a few seconds before declaring "I'm in," I appreciate WarGames' commitment to demonstrating exactly how David practices his craft.

When David discovers an unidentified system, he thinks he's hit the jackpot, especially when he uncovers a list of games on the server ranging from bridge and poker to Guerrilla Engagement and Global Thermonuclear War. However, he cannot interact with the host without a specific login name which he does not have. Undeterred and eager to play these exotic, if intimidating, titles, David dedicates himself to researching the entire list looking for clues. Again, we see a montage of David spending untold hours of his life combing through card catalogs, microfiche, and public records, a far cry from the bored kid who almost flunked biology.

Eventually David manages to access the system via a backdoor login linked to its original developer, Professor Stephen Falken. This convinces the remote host that David is actually its creator logging in after an extended absence, following Falken's apparent demise. David maintains the ruse, dismissing Falken's obituary as erroneous, and the machine accepts his word as fact. Surprisingly, the computer first suggests playing a game, much to David's amusement. He happily selects Global Thermonuclear War, choosing to play as the Soviet Union, and gleefully picks a number of American cities for annihilation—including his hometown of Seattle.

Unbeknownst to David, he has not stumbled onto a Silicon Valley software developer but rather linked up with a supercomputer inside NORAD. Nicknamed WOPR, short for War Operation Plan Response, this machine constantly runs simulations of World War III based on a steady stream of real-time data fed to it by other systems. With David's Global Thermonuclear War campaign now running on the system, his make-believe attacks are now just another data stream, causing a panic when the NORAD staff see what look like ICBMs heading for the Pacific Northwest.

David ends up quitting the game abruptly when his parents admonish him for not taking out the garbage properly, which erases the incoming missiles on NORAD's big screen. The military computer science team learns about the outside access and discovers the attack was fictional, but since our armed forces mobilized planes and submarines in response, this prompted the Soviets to move in turn, thus creating a very real point of tension between the superpowers. When a news report on the brief standoff catches David's eye, he realizes that his game has far-reaching consequences. Worse still, he receives a call from the WOPR wondering why he hasn't made his next move, meaning the computer intends to continue the game until it wins.

What follows is an early example of a modern techno-thriller, as the feds hunt David believing him to be a covert agent disrupting our military, all while David seeks to reconnect with the WOPR to end the game once and for all. His quest leads him to discover Falken alive and well, having gone full Luddite as he believes his creation has made nuclear armageddon inevitable. All this leaves David woefully short on time and allies as the WOPR counts down the hours remaining.

Fresh off of other contemporary computer-focused films like Tron, WarGames feels especially grounded. While the notion of a sentient artificial intelligence remains as far-fetched today as it did 40 years ago, the way humans and computers interact in the film actually resembles reality. David's home computer is bulky, requiring floppy disks to run complex programs. He has an acoustic coupler modem on his desk to contact other systems, and modern hackers still use automated scripts to call phone numbers en masse. The technique is now known as wardialing, named for the film.

Unusually for an 80s Cold War movie, WarGames lacks any malevolent or antagonistic characters. David casually engages in computer crimes but none of his antics qualify as malicious. Everyone at NORAD comes off as a bit of a hardass, but ultimately they all put their jobs and public safety first. Falken sees David as naive but the reclusive professor still welcomes a complete stranger into his home and eventually agrees to cooperate. Even the Soviet Union, often assigned the role of bad guy in 80s films, is never cast in an overtly negative light. When pressed on the matter, the commander of NORAD admits that the supposed "evil empire" would never launch nuclear missiles unprovoked; in his eyes, his enemies remain rational—and human.

That leaves the WOPR as the primary threat of WarGames, for the AI seeks to win the game of Global Thermonuclear War by any means necessary, even brute-forcing its way towards obtaining missile launch codes. Yet for all its anthropomorphic behavior, the WOPR demonstrates no inkling of spite or ill-will. The computer does exactly what humans programmed it to do: Win the game. Instead of a dramatic ending where David fools the WOPR into making a mistake or turning itself off—a classic Captain Kirk move—the film's climax rests on the WOPR learning the futility of nuclear war. In effect, the computer realizes it cannot win a game where, as it so eloquently phrases its discovery, "the only winning move is not to play."

Rewatching WarGames in 2023, I see the movie less as a warning against incorporating AI in military defense as I do a story about hope. In 1983, relations between the United States and Soviet Union seemed unsalvageable; each side spent billions arming itself to the teeth as a show of force. I knew next to nothing about the world at the time yet I still viewed communism as a threat thanks to aggressive propaganda; I can only imagine what kids in Russia were hearing about us.

In the face of all this open hostility, WarGames shows us another way. The movie holds innocence and optimism in high regards, rejecting Falken's cynicism and McKittrick's pessimism in favor of David's worldview. It is David who comes up with a solution as the WOPR threatens to launch the missiles while the NORAD staff around him view the situation as a lost cause. In a sense, the WOPR itself is innocent, as it never considered the realities of its duties until David taught it to care.

As stated above, WarGames was not the last film to cover this ground. In 1995, Crimson Tide had Denzel Washington observe that "in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." Four years earlier, Terminator 2 ended with a voiceover opining "if a machine…can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too." Yet both of these films came out after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was safely in the rear-view mirror. WarGames stood tall in 1983 with a boombox over its head and blasted its anti-nuke message when the superpowers barely spoke to each other.

Within a couple years of WarGames' release, US/Soviet relations would warm and decades of mutual assured destruction no longer seemed so assured. We never abandoned our nuclear weapons and the geopolitical theater is anything but calm today, but the era of two empires engaging in a staring contest with the apocalypse on the line has passed. The studio has revisited the WarGames "franchise" more than once in the 21st century, but the circumstances that made this story worth telling cannot be replicated. You could tell a new story about a teenage hacker accidentally infiltrating a military network, replacing the modems and disk drives with wifi and cloud storage, but without a looming monolith to unify our forces against, it wouldn't have the same impact.

Besides, we all know that a 21st century David Lightman would end up in Guantanamo Bay with no internet to hack and no phone to phreak, making for a very short movie.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.