Wargames director Jackie Schneider on why cyber is one of 'the most interesting scholarly puzzles'

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JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER: Those games still exist, and there's a whole community that deals with miniatures and wargames. But a lot of what I do is look at decision making and how individuals make decisions in uncertain conditions. So it’s more like a National Security Council sitting around a table and having those difficult conversations about what to do in a crisis.

CH: How is the gaming scenario set up?

JS: Generally, I organize people in groups of four to six, and I tell them to take a role. They're relatively small groups, so you get that really rich discussion about the crisis and the uncertainty.

Often I'll have a Head of State, a Minister of Finance, a Minister of War, or other similar roles. If we're doing a U.S.-specific war game, we’ll assign a Deputy Secretary of Defense, a Deputy Secretary of State, or a National Security Council advisor. Then, I’ll have them play those roles in the context of the game.

CH: When you look at the players’ decision making process, what kind of information are you drawing from these conversations?

JS: We actually don't get a lot of the good data about the conversations that they're having at the table. We rely on a few different data mechanisms. We give them response plans to fill out. The prompts are along the lines of: What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What are the means that you want to take? What are the risks about the plan that you're coming up with? That represents a kind of a group consensus.