SAVE THE DATE! Connections UK 2026 will be on the 8th – 10th September 2026 at Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
To help us plan for this for the conference we are very interested in how you feel about Connections, and you can help us shape the Conference, not just in the coming year, but also future years.
We would be really grateful if you would be able to complete the short (2-3 minute) survey via this link.
Comments Off on Some recent wargaming podcasts
Posted by Rex Brynen on 18/01/2026
The Wargame is a major five-part series from Sky News and Tortoise which imagines how a Russian attack on the UK could play out – and invites real-life former ministers, military chiefs and other experts to figure out how to defend the country.
The Army Mad Scientist podcast The Convergence podcast features Mike Barnett and Joe Chretien from the Sustainment Exercise and Simulation Directorate, Combined Arms Support Command discussing their Sinews of War: Theater Sustainment Operationswargame.
Jared Fishman discusses Kriegspiel (and other topics) with Jan Heinemann at the 20 Sided Gamified Podcast.
Comments Off on AFTERMATH: A Venezuela matrix game
Posted by Rex Brynen on 18/01/2026
From the ever-productive Tim Price comes a matrix game about Venezuela in the aftermath of the removal of Nicolás Maduro.
Briefings are provided for six actors: the Venezuelan regime, the Venezuelan military and security services, the opposition, the United States, other external and regional actors, organized crime, and “society, the streets, and informal power”—together with assets, a map, and a basic overview of how to play a matrix game.
Comments Off on MIT Summer Wargaming Institute
Posted by Rex Brynen on 17/01/2026
The Summer Wargaming Institute is a four-day “bootcamp”-style program hosted by the MIT Security Studies Program Wargaming Lab on 12-16 July, designed to teach practitioners and scholars how to design and run wargames for research, training, and analysis. Applicants must be PhD candidates or junior faculty in international relations, political science, or related fields or early to mid-career foreign policy/national security professionals.
Full details can be found here. The deadline for application is March 1.
Comments Off on Simulation & Gaming (February 2026)
Posted by Rex Brynen on 13/01/2026
Simulation & Gaming 57, 1 (February 2026) is now available.
Editorial
We Need Cooperation to Save Our World- and Other Lessons Learned From Gaming
Marlies P. Schijven and Toshiko Kikkawa
Research Articles
Exploring the Usability of Virtual Reality as a Tool to Assess Collective Non-Technical Skills: The Case of Team Communication During a Collaborative Task
Yasmina Kebir, Gaelle Nicolas, Samuel Ferreira Da Silva, Pierre Chevrier, Valérie Saint-Dizier de Almeida and Jérôme Dinet
A Longitudinal Study of Video Games’ Influence on Climate Change Concerns, Climate Refugee Awareness, and Environmental Behaviour Activism
Elena Shliakhovchuk, Micaela Martin, Miguel Chover and Viktor Danchuk
Effect of Playing Digital Games on Reaction Time in Taekwondo Athletes
Asli Dogan and Nihan Ozunlu Pekyavas
Digital Gaming and English L2 Informal Learning in Adolescents
Trung Hoang Minh Bui, Phuong Thi Tuyet Le and Farhan Ali
The Golden Age of Esports Players: Age, Prize Distributions, and Competitive Lifespans From 1997 to 2023
Jimoon Kang
Indigenous Games for Digital Natives: Generative Games From the African Akan Philosophy for Healthy Schooling
David Kyei-Nuamah
Game-Based Learning for Sustainable Development: Impacts on Students’ Perceptions by Prior Knowledge Level
In the Bruges case there are between 90 and 100 students a year, and in Aix there are 70. In both cases the idea is to simulate the EU’s Ordinary Legislative Procedure – so this means players representing Member States (Council or COREPER), the European Parliament, and the European Commission. In addition there are non-legislative actors in both games – lobbyists, campaigners, journalists.
The idea is not to simulate how the EU as a whole works. There is no European Council. No high level politics. There’s no Comitology either. The aim in both cases is to examine how everyday politics in the EU institutions works – not least because the students in both Bruges and Aix-en-Provence are going to be working in their post-university lives on everyday Regulations and Directives like this, rather than the high politics of summits.
The Canadian Army is in the process of modernizing our force through many avenues: capabilities, technology, tactics, training, and force organization and structure. To investigate how new capabilities may fare against modern opponents, wargaming provides an incredible opportunity to test these capabilities and how we employ them in a safe, flexible and cost-effective environment. Wargaming provides us insights into the strategic thinking of both friendly and adversarial entities, capability requirements, and the doctrinal/conceptual strengths and weaknesses of both forces.
The authors recently developed Lifeline Latvia, an unclassified link and node wargame designed to generate insights into the delivery of medical care to a battle group involved in a high-intensity engagement. The prototype game was played twice—with different scenarios—on consecutive days in March 2025. Subject matter experts commanded key nodes and engaged in open play. Combat was abstracted to allow a focus on medical activities. Enemy weapons’ effects were based on open-source information, which was judged sufficiently granular for a medical wargame.
Exercise Canada Paratus (ECP) was a pan-Canadian health security exercise that simulated the challenge of maintaining Canadians’ access to care while managing a high and sustained flow of casualties evacuated to Canada for treatment and recovery. This sort of exercise is essential for identifying gaps in our systems, improving crisis response, and building strong working relationships among the leaders that would need to collaborate during a major emergency like a war. Building on the success of Ontario’s Exercise Trillium Cura (ETC) held in 2024, ECP brought together from across Canada, experts from academia, federal, provincial, and territorial health systems, public sector agencies, private industry, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). Together, they explored how to better prepare for the arrival of wounded and deceased individuals, while ensuring that the broader Canadian population continues to receive the care they need.
In a recent paper from the CISS Munich Working Paper Series, “Wargaming: This is not a game!“, Christian Nitzl critically examines the application of wargaming [in German].
From an ethical and pedagogical standpoint, narrative-based simulations such as The Troubles are designed to provide an immersive and authentic medium that provides the necessary social context to support a safe and sensitive exploration of a controversial and harrowing period in history. Participants are given free agency to engage with their own and that of others’ “political and ideological positionings…related not only to knowledge, but also to action”.113 Players—students—of The Troubles should be active author-readers in this history; from an ethical and pedagogical standpoint, simulations like it provide unique opportunities that other, more traditional forms and modes of instruction often do not or cannot, particularly agency.
Just as museum visitors can choose to navigate through exhibits in different ways, players of The Troubles have the agency to approach the game from various perspectives. Unlike traditional mediums, The Troubles provides an innumerable constellation of objects and cards constantly creating a multitude of narrative nodes and nets of possibility for the student of history.
By drawing parallels between museums and tabletop games in facilitating engaging learning experiences, designers and players of controversial simulations like The Troubles co-author powerful and polyvocal narratives of the past. Through this collaborative process, players gain historical knowledge while engaging in the cycle of historical empathy, critically and morally participating in some of the most complex and harrowing historical contexts.
By revealing gaps, stress points and unexpected outcomes, wargaming helps decision-makers plan smarter and respond faster when the real thing hits. Ignoring these feedback loops risks turning slow moving challenges into sudden, systemic shocks.
Historically limited to traditional warfighting, it increasingly offers a way to stress-test systems against cascading threats, from resource scarcity driving geopolitical tensions to digital exclusion fuelling misinformation.
Our intention in designing the wargame in this way was motivated by concern that insufficient attention has been given to understanding how China’s leadership and war planners may conceptually approach the problem of bringing Taiwan to heel. This was particularly important given our participant composition: while predominantly U.S.-based, the group included a few international players. Participants brought diverse high-level experience, including former U.S. officials from the State Department, Department of Defense, and CIA, as well as the UK Cabinet Office. Several participants had military backgrounds, having served in the U.S. Army or Navy, and a few were established scholars in international relations. Around half the participants had expertise in the Chinese military or the Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, we deliberately designed the game to force participants to confront practical questions Chinese strategists would face when they draft and update their war plans, such as: How much force is enough to compel surrender without triggering U.S. intervention? What surrender terms would Taipei accept? How does Beijing transition from military action to political control of Taiwan to a favorable post-war status quo in the region and beyond?
These types of questions expose a gap in American strategic thinking. Most U.S. wargames focus on operational and tactical military interactions — ship movements, missile salvos, casualty counts, what percentage of Chinese troops land in the north of Taiwan vs. the south. The focus is overwhelmingly on the invasion scenario. They rarely examine the political context that shapes military decisions. This narrow focus produces a dangerous blind spot: the United States prepares for the war it can fight or prefers to fight, not the one China expects to win.
The exercise revealed three scenarios that generated the most debate among participants. First, a limited missile barrage followed by diplomatic ultimatum — essentially, coercion without invasion. Second, a graduated escalation that stops short of attacking U.S. forces. Third, an assault designed to cripple U.S. forces at the outset and present Taipei with a new reality of isolation. Each path reflected different risk tolerances and assumptions about American resolve.
Imagine attempting to predict the outcome of a chess match between two world-class players by studying the tactics of both chess masters and then simulating a single game. What effect might a mis-moved pawn early in the game have on the endgame scenario? If you have ever played chess, you know a single misstep can have massive repercussions down the line. Even if a team simulates this chess match 20 times, it is unlikely it could predict the outcome. A better way to predict the winner might be to train AI on data from every game the chess masters ever played, then let the AI play out millions of possible match scenarios. One could then determine the most likely outcome based on the aggregated data.
This is exactly the approach the U.S. military should take in wargaming. Ultimately, wargaming presents an optimization problem—how should global forces behave to best achieve U.S. objectives? The modern battlespace contains countless variables, making the problem more complex than humans alone can likely solve. Returning to the chess metaphor, AI has proven superior to humans at the game for more than two decades, since IBM’s Deep Blue AI defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. Many had argued that humans were better suited to predict the best move in a situation that had never been encountered—a sentiment echoed by many in the wargaming community. This assumption was again proven wrong in 2017 when Google’s AlphaGo bested the world’s top player at Go, an ancient game even more complex than chess.
While AI is growing more powerful by the day, it does have its limitations. Its ability to simulate warfare would only be as good as the data from which it learned. If the learning set is flawed, so will be the model, and every past wargame is flawed in some way. But AI could remove the noise from human adjudicators’ decision-making and produce more consistent and reliable models. It could enable leaders to analyze a wargame in retrospect and test how changing certain variables affects the outcome, answering questions such as: How would an increase in naval forces in this particular region have affected our forces’ ability to close vital supply chains? or How would poor weather have affected the enemy’s air defenses for this particular strike? Answering these questions without AI would require rerunning an entire game, an unrealistic and impractical approach.
DEF CON, which began in 1993, is an international cybersecurity conference. It’s also one of the biggest conferences for hackers in the world. One of the main goals of the conference’s various subsets, or policy villages, is to introduce different perspectives on technology and policy making to different audiences, including government officials, computer engineers, and technical hackers.
Volker Franke, professor of conflict management, and Amer Alnajar, an International Conflict Management Ph.D. student working with Franke as a graduate research assistant, decided to add the perspective of social scientists to the DEF CON mix by running a crisis simulation with a humanitarian angle.
“We had simulated a cyberattack on a nuclear reactor in Switzerland. In the simulated event, we had some radiation fallout, and people needed to be evacuated,” Franke said. “This is where we get to the humanitarian response. What needs to be done to get people away from the reactor?”
…
An ambitious goal of their research is to utilize AI when a simulation lacks enough human players to operate effectively. Their hope is to use AI to mimic the roles of humans in the simulation alongside actual human participants. Franke said they are “two or three steps away” from being able to fully dig into that aspect of their research.
Alnajar said AI could also accelerate the design timeframe for simulations. For example, Franke said Alnajar programmed AI to quickly find out what the effects and impact of their simulated cyberattack in Poland would be 72 hours after the strike; a process which “is so intricate that it would require a week of research to figure out what that might be.” Alnajar said AI is valuable in forecasting the quantitative implications of simulated crises by providing numbers about casualties, refugees, and dislocated citizens in significantly less time.
In this podcast, Timothy Peacock and Rebecca Sutton talk about peacegaming and their work at the Games and Gaming Lab at the University of Glasgow. This talk was inspired by their workshop at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating (May Peace Prevail), which took place in Glasgow in May 2025.
Trust & Safety: Armed Conflict is a serious game that explores the complex tradeoffs faced by a social media company’s trust and safety team when responding to armed conflict and crisis situations. Developed with the International Committee of the Red Cross, it was created by Copia Gaming and Leveraged Play, written and developed by Mike Masnick, Randy Lubin, and Leigh Beadon, with support from the governments of Luxembourg and Switzerland.
Interregnum is a new leadership and strategic communication simulator from the Polish Naval Academy. You can read about it at Daily Mare:
Interregnum is more than just a game. It is a leadership laboratory, a controlled environment where participants can safely make mistakes and learn how the worlds of politics, strategic communication, and international relations truly function, explains dr Łukasz Wyszyński, head of the Department of International Relations at the Polish Naval Academy.
The system consists of two key components. The first is a browser-based grand strategy game, in which participants compete for influence and resources. The second is a set of custom-designed training scenarios, developed by the Academy’s experts and tailored to specific educational objectives.
According to dr Paweł Kusiak, head of the Game and Simulation Laboratory, participants assume the roles of political leaders operating in an environment of incomplete information. They must plan, negotiate, and make strategic decisions. In practice, they learn how political theory and international relations concepts translate into real-world decision-making processes.
At the start of the academic year,more than a thousand MIT students used the En-ROADS climate policy simulation to role-play as global decision-makers, experimenting with policies such as carbon pricing and clean energy investment to keep global warming well below 2°C. Through workshops and a simulated global climate summit, participants explored how different policy choices affect the climate, economy, and human health while negotiating pathways consistent with the Paris Agreement. You can read about it here.
The core mission of EMCE: City Blackout is to demonstrate how early preparedness and effective coordination reduce cascading effects in emergencies. Players must assess risk, prioritize resources, and act quickly to prevent minor disruptions from evolving into full-scale crises. Throughout the game, participants will be working to mitigate power outages and infrastructure failures while assessing community vulnerabilities. Every round is an opportunity for real-world learning. The facilitator leads scenario briefings, pauses for reflection, and interprets data to help participants explore:
Comments Off on Games of War conference, 24 February 2026
Posted by Rex Brynen on 06/01/2026
The Faculty of History at the University of Gdansk together with Magnus Ducatus Foundation in collaboration with European Humanities University and the Department of Computer Systems and Technologies of Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics, are proud to announce the 3rd international academic hybrid conference “Games of War”, coming on the 24th of February 2025. The event is held every year on 24 February, marking the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022. It stands as both an act of academic reflection and a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine and all those affected by war.
Over the past editions, Games of War has grown into a significant international forum for scholars, game designers, historians, and cultural researchers.
1st Edition (2024): Focused on the representations of war and historical conflict in games, exploring how game mechanics and storytelling engage with violence, trauma, and memory.
2nd Edition (2025): Expanded to include the war in Ukraine as a central topic, with Ukrainian academics, game developers, and cultural analysts sharing firsthand perspectives on how games respond to ongoing conflict.
3rd Edition (2026): Will examine the evolving narratives of war, identity, and resilience in digital and analog games — four years into the full-scale invasion, and more than a decade since the invasion in Ukraine began.
Comments Off on Looking back on 2025—and ahead to 2026
Posted by Rex Brynen on 01/01/2026
Happy New Year to one and all!
This past year saw 38,723 visitors (77,451 page views) to PAXsims, down from 56,070 visitors in 2024. The decline likely reflects several factors, including fewer posts during the year (91, down from 113) and the continued migration of discussion on conflict simulation and serious gaming to other fora, including LinkedIn, Discord, and elsewhere. Since the site was established, PAXsims has attracted more than 715,000 visitors and 1.5 million page views.
Over the past year, visitors came from 167 countries and territories, with the largest share from the United States. The top ten locations were as follows:
More broadly, 2025 was a year in which wargaming, policy gaming, and other forms of serious gaming continued to grow in popularity, application, and sophistication. AI has had a major impact on serious gaming in the past year, and its role is likely to grow in the year ahead. While the United States and United Kingdom remain the most important wargaming centres within NATO, there has been notable growth elsewhere—notably in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark, and beyond—visible in conferences, collaborations, and institutional activity. Canada also strengthened its wargaming capacity, although recent contracting changes risk deinstitutionalizing some of that progress.
There are, however, major grounds for concern too. As a field, (war)gaming has struggled to keep pace with a rapidly changing security environment. This is true in relation to technological and battlefield developments, but even more so with respect to major strategic shifts. Much contemporary gaming remains reluctant to grapple seriously with uncertain alliances, contested legitimacy, and emerging threats, and instead remains anchored in what may now be a fading strategic context.
These changes are also straining professional networks and collaboration. In recent months, several American institutions—concerned about political backlash—have quietly withdrawn public endorsement of the Derby House Principles or have ceased to mention diversity and inclusion altogether. Some professional gamers have been reluctant, or have refused, to travel to the United States to attend conferences, support games, or collaborate with US counterparts, citing the political climate or concerns about potential legal or ethical exposure.
Against this backdrop, 2026 may prove to be a critical year. Can serious gaming meaningfully help us navigate and mitigate these emerging challenges? Will it continue largely as business as usual, sidestepping profound changes already underway? Or will wargamers—engaged in a form of anticipatory obedience, a banality of gaming—find themselves complicit in supporting unethical or otherwise problematic policies?
On February 7, 2026, the Women’s Wargaming Network (WWN) will partner with the International Kriegsspiel Society (IKS) to host a live, facilitated Kriegsspiel session, the 200-year-old Prussian staff wargame that still shapes how military decision-making is taught today.
Date: Feb 07, 2026 Time: 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM EST | 5:00 – 9:00 PM CET Location: Discord (link shared on website & invite)
This 4-hour, double-blind game places participants in command roles where they must operate with limited information, communicate through adjudicators, and navigate real command friction and uncertainty.
No prior experience is required, facilitators will guide players throughout.
Given the overwhelming response to our last Kriegsspiel session, we’re thrilled to bring it back and open it again to the WWN community.
Comments Off on #GFC2026
Posted by Rex Brynen on 17/12/2025
The 2026 Games for Change Festival will take place in New York on 21-22 July.
As education, entertainment, technology, and community engagement continue to evolve, play has become a powerful form of self-expression and exploration, enabling us to envision better futures and test bold ideas. Play is more than games; it’s a living, evolving force that invites experimentation, collaboration, and creative exploration. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that the 2026 Games for Change Festival theme is Reimagining Play.
Taking place at The Glasshouse in New York City on July 21-22, 2026, the Festival will bring together inspiring talks and panels, interactive arcades, hands-on design workshops, a cutting-edge arcade, plus the 2026 G4C Awards. This year’s Festival introduces new session formats designed to foster deeper engagement and hands-on learning.
Speaker and award submissions are now open for #G4C2026 until February 2. Bring your voice, your projects, and your ideas to our global community.
We would like to host research on the relationship between wargaming, simulations, and organization studies. The sub-theme invites papers addressing the role of games and simulations in studying organizations and in management education. Papers might be guided by, but not limited to, questions such as:
Can games and simulations be used as experimental settings for the study of organizational behaviour? Taking inspiration from behavioural economics and the techniques of assessment centres, can we develop research methods based on game experiments?
While the military have inspired management scholars in the past, can organization scholars contribute to the design of experiential and immersive education for military professionals? Focusing on wargames, how can organization scholars support the development of wargames and wargaming practices (Bae & Brown, 2021; Banks, 2024; Bartels, 2020; Hulterström, 2024) with their analytical and theoretical tools?
Serious games are being used in the study and in preparation for civilian emergencies and global issues (food security, disrupted logistics, climate change, public health). Can organization scholars contribute to a further development of this experience through collaborating with scientists and medical doctors?
The business strategy game tradition is well established in management schools, but immersive learning and serious gaming could be expanded. Furthermore, business simulations rarely deal with logistics, public health emergencies, crisis management, conflicts and international relations. Shall organization scholars contribute to enriching standard business simulations (Lépinard, 2019; Sierra, 2020) in an interdisciplinary manner?
On the digital side of this sector, AI can potentially contribute to wargaming, simulations and modelling, perhaps even to agent-based modelling in organization studies. Complex simulations and innovative red teaming are now possible at a large scale and a faster pace thanks to AI agents. Will AI enhance or reduce the importance of decision-making theory and the study of organizational behaviour?
The discussion below highlights my own views on the Trump Administration’s emerging strategic doctrine, the particular implications of that for my own country (Canada), and finally some more brief thoughts on what we need to be (war)gaming if we are to support an effective strategic response.
The NSS and the “Trump Doctrine”
The 29-page NSS largely ignores the threat posed by a revisionist, militarized Russia, even as it tacitly echoes several of Moscow’s core talking points—so closely, in fact, that it has been openly praised by Russian officials. That shift is especially striking given that Russia continues in its brutal attempts to subjugate neighbouring Ukraine, yet the document prioritizes negotiation and “strategic stability,” blaming European elites for continuation of the war. The NSS frames U.S. security commitments in sharply conditional, transactional terms, signalling a retreat from longstanding American commitments to help defend Europe against aggression. This impression is reinforced by Trump administration policy on Ukraine, which seeks to reward Russian territorial conquest while laying blame for the conflict on Ukraine itself. This represents a profound moral and strategic inversion—transforming the victim of a war of conquest into the supposed problem, while offering the aggressor de-escalation on accommodating terms. The message to Moscow is that U.S. resolve is collapsing; the message to Europe is that even in the face of outright invasion, American security guarantees can no longer be taken for granted.
According to reporting from Defense One, the classified version of the NSS goes even further, calling for the weakening of the EU by pulling key countries away and the establishment of a “C5” to replace the G7, without European participation.
The NSS also recasts democratic Europe not as a community of allies but as a political and civilizational problem, framing it as a space threatened by “civilizational erasure,” cultural decline, and dysfunction—language that closely mirrors far-right narratives. Most strikingly, it signals an intention to “cultivate resistance” within European societies, implicitly endorsing or encouraging ethno-nationalist and right-wing extremist political movements that oppose mainstream liberal democratic governments. Taken together, this amounts to a profound inversion of traditional U.S. strategy: accommodation toward a brutal authoritarian challenger in the East, coupled with ideological and political confrontation with democratic allies in the West. The danger here is not simply that the United States is behaving in illiberal ways, but that it exports and encourages the erosion of democracy and the rule of law—in short, that America’s dysfunction might be contagious.
This strategic challenge to liberal democracy is powerfully amplified in the social-media sphere, where Elon Musk has increasingly used his X platform to frame politics in white nationalist terms, railing about the need to defend “Western civilization” while depicting the European Union—arguably the most successful peace-building and democratizing project in human history—as an authoritarian or even Nazi regime. (The irony of this coming from a man who boosts actual Nazis online and has publicly performed fascist salutes has not gone unnoticed.) This rhetorical ecosystem matters because it normalizes a worldview in which liberal democratic Europe is an enemy of “true” Western identity.
What once would have been treated as hostile foreign influence operations by an adversary now emerges as a real spectre within the alliance itself—one that threatens to weaponize information, destabilize democratic institutions, and fracture the political foundations of the transatlantic order from within.
The View from Canada
For its part, Canada largely escapes notice in the NSS, generically grouped within the section on the Western Hemisphere. Even here, however, the language of American hegemony is deeply disturbing given everything else that is happening.
US-Canadian bilateral relations had deteriorated dramatically since January, even before the NSS. A key part of this has been the Trump Administration’s trade and tariff policies, which are almost universally seen in Canada as abusive, unfair, and possibly illegal—especially since many of them rely on specious claims about fentanyl smuggling or are in apparent violation of Canada–United States–Mexico free trade agreement. Some $3.6 billion in trade crosses the Canada-US border each day, with exports to the United States accounting for around 2.3 million jobs in Canada and total two-way trade in goods and services is equivalent to two-thirds of Canada’s GDP.
On top of this, there have been the periodic references to making Canada “the 51st state.” While many Americans may simply dismiss these as rhetorical excess not to be taken seriously, in Canada they are seen as far more dark and threatening. In one of his earliest official telephone calls with Canadian leaders, President Trump not only repeated comments about the 51st state but also suggested he did not accept the current demarcation of the Canada-US border. His preoccupation with taking control of neighbouring Greenland from Denmark, another NATO ally, has not gone unnoticed either. While Canada publicly emphasizes potential challenges to its Arctic sovereignty from Russia or China, many analysts (and many northerners) believe that the United States —which asserts that the Northwest Passage is an international strait rather than sovereign Canadian territory—is perhaps the larger threat. As Arctic security scholar Franklyn Griffiths has written:
Canada needs to consider the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will soon, and without our permission, send American warships into and through the waterways of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, commonly known as the Northwest Passage.
We owe it to ourselves to imagine what an imminent show of American force (rather than an invasion) would mean. We should also use the prospect to deal with and not write off Mr. Trump’s threats to annex us.
If he were to order weaponry into Arctic Canada, the President would be doing vastly more than creating another Canada-U.S. flareup over the status of the Northwest Passage in international law. His move would mark the start of an attempted annexationist takeover, and eventually an autocratic makeover of Canada as a country and a people….Whether or not the U.S. Navy actually enters the Northwest Passage in the coming days, Mr. Trump’s takeover dream presents us with a real-life threat that commands attention and planning without delay.
Extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers at sea by the US military has deepened Canadian disquiet about the reckless and illegal use of US military power in the region. There is a parallel concern that the US is subverting a rules-based international system and sabotaging international cooperation on issues ranging from climate change to accountability for war crimes.
Finally, the deterioration of the democratic rule of law in the United States, hateful rhetoric against immigrants and minorities, and the official transphobia that today permeates American governmental institutions is seen as incompatible with Canadian values of inclusion and tolerance—concepts that are imperfectly manifest, but which most Canadians still value. For an explicitly and constitutionally multicultural liberal democracy like Canada, the rise of an illiberal, white-nationalist foreign and domestic policy in Washington, and its threats to target noncompliant democracies, represents a fundamental, even existential, threat.
Moreover, many Canadians now see the American threat not simply as an aberration linked to one transitory Administration but reflective of deeper issues, attitudes, changes in US society and dysfunctions in the US political system. Current (Liberal) Prime Minister Mark Carney—a political centrist who is hardly given to overblown rhetoric—has described it as a “rupture,” noting that “the old relationship we had with the U.S. based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operation is over.” Former (Conservative) Prime Minister Stephen Harper has warned that “The reality now that we have not faced as a country in 100 years, of seeing the United States flex its muscles in a way that has nothing to do with values or ideals, that is something we can’t forget, and we cannot make ourselves entirely dependent on that relationship.”
The new NSS only confirms this impression. As Kerry Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO, wrote this week, the Trump Administration has unveiled a strategic vision that is “inherently hostile to Canada and other allies in alarming ways,” creating “a world where the US isn’t just leaving behind its role as friend and protector – it might be turning into an active strategic risk.”
Can (War)Gaming Help?
While proponents of wargaming are quick to explain that it is not a predictive tool, we do like to think of it as a useful way to think about threats, contingencies, strategic planning, and “what ifs”. To date, however, the serious gaming community has been slow in responding to the challenge of this new security environment.
Part of this is inertia—after all, NATO countries have spent decades thinking about a collective, coordinated alliance response to aggression, and (with the partial exception of the French) haven’t given much consideration of US reticence, unreliability, withdrawal, or realignment. Part of it is embedded partnership. The US has been a key part of the team for so long—indeed, the senior leader in the team, with many officers serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan, NORAD, or elsewhere—that many in Western defence establishments just cannot contemplate alternatives. Part of it is political and diplomatic sensitivity, not only within the alliance but even within individual member states. After all, officials in Washington might not be very happy if they knew they were the focus of an allied wargame.
Nevertheless, someone needs to do it—not because the United States is preordained to shift from ally to adversary, but because we can no longer exclude that it might do so in the coming years. Given how long things like trade diversification, defence procurement, and strategic realignment take, work needs to be done now in case it is needed later.
Speaking again from a Canadian perspective, there are several broad areas that gaming might illuminate, with many possible scenarios within each. For example:
NATO abandonment. What happens if there is a serious hybrid or kinetic threat to Europe from Russia, and the US declines to get involved? What can Canada contribute? What diplomatic strategies might most effectively encourage continued US engagement? How can NATO function without US capabilities?
A challenge to Arctic sovereignty. What might be the Canadian response if there were an unauthorized US effort to traverse the Northwest Passage, whether by a civilian vessel, the US Coast Guard, or even the US Navy? Are there possible passive or less-than-lethal options, akin to Iceland’s effective campaign against the Royal Navy during the Cod Wars? What assets are required to better protect Arctic sovereignty from a US (rather than Russian or Chinese) threat? What are the political and diplomatic dimensions of this?
Trade diversification. The loss of US markets (and the vulnerability this underscores) requires a diversification of Canadian trade, but how can this be achieved? What are the obstacles to a closer economic relationship with Europe? How can Canada exploit the potential of Chinese markets without creating new vulnerabilities (either from China or from an angry Washington)?
Political interference. How might Canada respond to US influence operations aimed at boosting white nationalist or separatist groups? How might this be complicated by the complicity (or active support) of some social media platforms?
Intelligence cooperation. How might strategic tensions play out within the Five Eyes intelligence sharing community? How would Canada respond if it became a target of active or stepped-up collection by US intelligence agencies?
Finand, eh? Throughout the Cold War, the government and people of Finland navigated the threat from the USSR by protecting Soviet security from outside threats while developing a “total defence” strategy that bolstered societal resilience and rendered any Soviet invasion or occupation potentially costly. Is this something Canada should consider, and what would it take?
It would be good to see the Canadian government (and, by extension, European governments too) taking on the challenge. But even if they don’t, academics, think-tanks, and others can help illuminate these issues in a way that might support policy development.
Comments Off on (War)gaming Canadian Security in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty
Posted by Rex Brynen on 01/12/2025
“Triumph through Diversity” memorial, Parliament Hill, Ottawa.
The Connections North 2026 professional (war)gaming conference will be held at the National Capital Region Officers’ Mess, Ottawa on 14 March 2026. The theme this year will be (War)gaming Canadian Security in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty.
Canada’s security environment is being reshaped by an unusually volatile convergence of external and internal strategic pressures. Russia’s sustained aggression in Europe has shattered assumptions about the stability of the post–Cold War order and reintroduced large-scale interstate war as a central feature of the global security landscape, with profound implications for NATO, deterrence, and Canadian defence commitments. At the same time, the continued growth of Chinese economic, technological, and military power is transforming the Indo-Pacific into a core arena of strategic competition, raising the risks of escalation over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and in the cyber and space domains. For the first time in living memory, the United States itself has also emerged as a central source of strategic uncertainty for—and even threat to—Canada. Overall, the global rules-based order on which Canadian prosperity and security depends is rapidly eroding.
This year’s conference will focus on how wargaming (and other serious gaming) might illuminate such challenges, as well as other issues.
Paper and presentation proposals are encouraged in the following areas:
Gaming traditional threats in a shifting global order
Ally or adversary? Gaming the changing US-Canada security relationship
(War)gaming invisible threats and national resilience
The development of serious gaming in Canada
(War)gaming methodology and critiques
Other serious gaming topics.
We also intend to provide an opportunity for live demonstrations of games over an extended lunch break. If you have a game, or a poster, that you would like to include in the demonstration session then please let us know.
Conference registration (via Eventbrite) is $85 (regular and $30 (student), and includes lunch, coffee, and refreshments. An updated programme will be available in early February.
Information on earlier Connections North conferences can be found here.
Comments Off on Bridging theory, practice, and pressure: CNN Academy’s humanitarian health journalism simulation
Posted by Rex Brynen on 29/11/2025
This article was written for PAXsims by Zinzi Sibanda a BA(Hons)student in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a member of the CNN Academy simulation team. The report below reflects her personal views, and not those of CNN or any other organization.
Humanitarian crisis simulations are well established across the international system. United Nations agencies, NGOs, government organizations, and universities have long built exercises to replicate the pressure and complexity of real emergencies—from the IOM’s 2025 Rapid Response Team Simulation Exercise, where participants were tested on their ability to respond to the onset of a sudden crisis, to the annual field-based humanitarian response course offered by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. These programs play a vital role in preparing responders for crisis environments. Yet, almost all of them train humanitarian professionals in isolation from the journalists who will ultimately shape how those crises are understood by the global public.
The 2025 CNN Academy simulation in Abu Dhabi set out to change that.
In a unique collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and the Gates Foundation, this iteration of CNN Academy deliberately fused humanitarian crisis training with immersive journalism simulation. The result was a demanding, fast-moving environment that mirrored the unpredictable information flows of real-world emergencies—where humanitarian actors and journalists must operate under parallel pressures, navigate conflicting priorities, and respond to rapidly shifting narratives.
Video by Caroline Scott.
More than 140 students from 40 countries took part in the simulation. Most were journalism students from CNN Academy’s partner universities, alongside Emirati participants with an interest in multiplatform storytelling. They were joined by a group of global health storytellers from the Global South, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, and by graduate (MPH) students from Johns Hopkins, who formed the core of the humanitarian communications cohort. CNN Academy’s local partner was once again the Abu Dhabi Creative Media Authority, whose remarkable staff made the entire week possible.
Briefing participants.
“You have been sent to Brynania to cover a growing humanitarian crisis….”
Delivered on the first day alongside initial briefings and simulated press materials, this message immediately set the tone for the week. From that moment on, students were immersed in uncertainty. The CNN Academy team had created a living, breathing fictional world shaped by political actors, social tensions, and a fast-moving, reactive social-media ecosystem.
As the crisis unfolded, journalists moved through press conferences, formal interviews, impromptu encounters, and digital interactions in real time. At the same time, the humanitarian students assumed the roles of communications officers for the Brynanian Ministry of Health, UN agencies, and local and international NGOs. Working both within their organizations and collectively as the Health Communications and Community Engagement Working Group, they held press conferences, gave interviews, coordinated public messaging, managed Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) activities, and monitored the fast-moving social-media environment. Their decisions shaped the information landscape in real time, creating a genuinely two-sided simulation in which journalists and humanitarian communicators directly influenced one another’s outcomes.
The experience was often chaotic by design, but it created ideal conditions for humanitarian communications students to practice delivering clear, effective public-health messaging in a heavily politicized environment. For emerging journalists, it was an opportunity to separate signal from noise and determine what truly mattered for a global audience reporting from the center of a crisis.
Humanitarian communications students received situation reports outlining conditions in Brynania, from public-health challenges to political tensions. These were deliberately incomplete and sometimes contradictory, reflecting the uncertainty responders routinely face in real emergencies. Over the course of the week, press releases, political statements, social-media rumors, and unexpected complications forced participants to adapt their messaging, conduct briefings, respond to interviews, and recalibrate strategy under constant pressure.
Placing participants in a room with more than a hundred journalists all shouting questions proved to be a powerful stress test for public-health communicators. The simulation’s “safe-to-fail” design reproduced the pressures, complexity, and information overload of real-world crisis reporting, testing not only technical knowledge but also the ability to analyze incomplete data, prioritize rapidly, verify claims, and make sound decisions under intense public and media scrutiny.
A press conference underway.
A wide range of key journalism skills were developed and tested:
Identifying a clear story angle, avoiding the “all-you-can-eat buffet” approach, and making strategic editorial decisions.
Interviewing skills, including building rapport, active listening, asking effective follow-ups, and managing difficult or emotional conversations.
Press-conference participation, including asking concise, meaningful questions, handling live responses, and extracting useful quotes.
Soft-skills and interpersonal awareness, such as showing respect, cultural sensitivity, and empathy toward vulnerable or marginalized people.
Team management and collaboration, including delegating tasks, coordinating roles, maintaining communication, and working effectively with producers.
Fact-checking and source verification, including cross-checking official statements, reviewing documents, and confirming images.
Understanding humanitarian communications, including correct terminology (e.g., migrants, refugees, asylum seekers) and avoiding stigmatizing language.
Contextual and structural analysis, such as understanding public-health challenges, water and sanitation issues, displacement drivers, and political pressures.
Common-sense decision-making, especially when confronted with conflicting information or logistical complications.
Strategic thinking in chaotic environments, including filtering essential from non-essential information and adjusting coverage as new facts emerge.
OSINT competencies, such as tracking digital clues, interpreting social-media behaviour, and navigating online investigative challenges.
Use of AI and digital tools, including responsible use of generative AI for scripts, notes, research assistance, or image checking.
Managing social-media inputs, including monitoring feeds, separating signal from noise, spotting rumours, and verifying claims.
Working sources over time, building rapport to develop leads, establish new contacts, and deepen access.
Ethical judgment, ensuring balanced coverage, avoiding stigmatizng language, and representing marginalized groups fairly.
Awareness of privilege and positionality, reflecting on the power dynamics inherent in reporting on low-income, politically fraught, and crisis-affected communities.
Scriptwriting and structuring narratives, especially under tight deadlines for a three-minute final report.
Video production and editing, including paper edits, shot selection, audio quality, and visual storytelling.
Time management under pressure, balancing research, fieldwork, scriptwriting, and production deadlines in a compressed news cycle
Reporting from District 10, Mcgilldishu.
Skills developed by humanitarian communications students included:
Understanding the interplay between public health, displacement, and crisis communication
Drafting coordinated talking points, press releases, and media lines
Planning and conducting press conferences, including managing difficult questions
Designing culturally sensitive RCCE messages tailored to diverse communities
Monitoring social media for misinformation, sentiment shifts, and early warning signals
Tracking and responding to rumours circulating online or within affected communities
Responding rapidly and consistently to media inquiries
Coordinating messaging across multiple agencies with differing mandates and priorities
Building constructive working relationships with journalists and field reporters
Producing an end-of-week communications review and strategy plan
Humanitarian communications officers in a planning session.
The design of the simulation emphasized that real-world crises are rarely orderly. Information might be fragmentary, incomplete, sometimes contradictory, and subject to interpretation and context. This is a challenge for journalists and humanitarian communicators alike.
In addition to the simulation activities, participants also attended workshops, lectures, and masterclasses on a range of relevant topics, including mobile journalism, scriptwriting, editing, field reporting, covering humanitarian and public health stories, and global health storytelling. CNN anchor Becky Anderson led discussions with Paul Spiegel (Johns Hopkins University), Mamadou Sow (ICRC Regional Delegation for the Gulf Cooperation Council), Hannah Cockburn-Logie (Gates Foundation), and Amir Berenjian (REM5 Studios). Mija Ververs (JHU) also contributed her insight and knowledge, as did various CNN Academy journalists and trainers.
His Excellency Dr. Sultan Al Neyadi, UAE Minister of Youth (and former astronaut), delivered an address to the group.
The final day consisted of extensive debriefing sessions and awards to the winning teams.
Overall, the week was highly successful. The end-of-simulation survey showed the almost all participants strongly felt that had learned relevant and useful skills during the week (9.23/10) and would recommend the program to others (9.25/10). CNN Academy will be conducting the humanitarian health simulation again in July, in partnership with the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin (for more information, visit the CNN Academy website).
Team members from CNN Academy and the Abu Dhabi Creative Media Authority after a full day of (simulated) field reporting in “District 10.“
This was my first time supporting and participating in a CNN Academy simulation, and I found the experience enormously stimulating. The professionalism, creativity, and generosity of the CNN Academy and Creative Media Authority teams were exceptional. The students themselves were both inspired and inspiring, serious about the responsibility of crisis reporting and communication, yet willing to take risks, make mistakes, and learn under pressure. What stayed with me most was how quickly strangers from different disciplines, countries, and professional cultures became collaborators in a shared, high-stakes environment. It was a powerful reminder of what thoughtful simulation can achieve — and of the next generation of journalists and humanitarian communicators now stepping into this space.
Comments Off on Save the date: Connections North 2026
Posted by Rex Brynen on 19/11/2025
We are pleased to be able to announce that the Connections North 2026 professional (war)gaming conference will be held at the National Capital Region Officers’ Mess at 149 Somerset St West in Ottawa on Saturday 14th March 2026.
A more complete announcement with theme, costs, and booking instructions will follow soon. We look forward to seeing you there!
Information on previous Connections North conferences can be found here.
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