As I discuss below, this can be frustrating, but it can amplify wargaming’s impact. Like war (or crisis response), wargaming is a human endeavor. Informing policy requires embracing what makes wargaming unique: people and the stories we tell. The purpose is to start a conversation on how the wargaming community can ensure that our oft-prescient work has the policy impact we desire.

I use them as an example of how even well-designed games on crucial topics may not have the desired policy impact if their insights fail to reach key policymakers or influence their thinking. I want to emphasize that this is not a critique of the pandemic games or their designers. It also forced me to grapple with the tensions between achieving research objectives, respecting wargaming’s strengths and limitations, and informing policy.

This hybrid experience has given me multiple lenses to examine wargaming’s role in policymaking. I’ve been on multiple sides of this problem, as a wargamer, player, analyst, advisor, and strategist. But this beneficial effect only occurs if policymakers and organizations can access, absorb, and act on the insights and lessons they provide. What lessons should the wargaming and policy communities take from this experience? Games have a proven record of helping people think through “ wicked problems” such as counterinsurgencies, major wars, great– power competition, or pandemics. Instead of serving as a clarion call for preparedness or guiding the response, however, these games have become an ironic historical footnote. Often, these games eerily predicted events in the current pandemic, along with the policy hurdles the government has faced. National security practitioners held several high-profile pandemic wargames and exercises in the years prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.

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