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The vision of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative is to advance wargames, simulations, and their data as analytic tools and learning resources for academia, policy, and industry. WCSI plays a unique role in the wargaming community, serving as a data-centered bridge between traditional wargaming and academia with the aim of expanding the use of wargaming beyond traditional communities and in catalyzing wargaming innovations for both academia and policy.

Three Pillars of the Wargaming & Crisis Simulation Initative
Hoover Wargaming Archive

The Wargaming Archive

The centerpiece of WCSI is Hoover Institution’s Wargaming Archive, a publicly accessible digital repository of wargaming data housed within the Hoover Library and Archives. The wargaming archive features scholar-designed wargames, unclassified and declassified government wargames, and think tank or industry wargames. The archive is designed to be easily searchable across a wide array of substantive and methodological terms, facilitating both large-N analysis and deep case studies. The archive also increases methodological transparency and rigor within the wargaming discipline by hosting wargaming design materials and data for evaluation, replication, and testing. Finally, the archive is a pedagogical resource that provides open source game design and materials for use in the classroom. 

Wargames and Simulation

Running Wargames and Simulations

WCSI runs scholar-designed game series and simulations to help understand some of the biggest academic and policy questions of our time including the US-China relationship, cyber, nuclear weapons, AI, and space.  Previous game series include the International Crisis Wargame Series and the Maritime Crisis Wargame Series.  In addition to running research games, WCSI also uses wargames as training for policymakers and academics, including Hoover Institution’s Congressional Fellowship Program and Governors’ Chief of Staff Program.  All material and data generated through WCSI’s wargames and simulations are stored in Hoover Institution’s open access wargaming archive, which allows these games to be replicated, modified, and used for teaching and training.

Wargaming Community

Fostering the Wargaming Community

WICS facilitates the methodological advancement of wargaming by providing data, resources, and a community of interest for scholars developing best practices for wargaming design and analysis.  In order to build the community, the initiative hosts events that brings together leaders in wargaming, academia, industry, and the policy community; publishes wargaming methodology studies in peer-reviewed articles, periodicals, and books; and hosts and collaborates with academics, policy leaders, and partner institutions on wargaming research.

Featured: International Crisis Wargame
Inernational Crisis Wargame Series

The International Crisis Wargame Series is an experimentally-designed strategic crisis wargame that explores the relationship between new technologies, domestic politics, conventional military capabilities, and nuclear threats.  It was specifically designed to look at the impact of cyber operations on nuclear stability but has more broadly helped researchers better understand the role that emerging technologies play in crisis decision-making and how Cold War paradigms of deterrence and crisis escalation apply in a world with new capabilities and vulnerabilities.

This webpage provides users with the materials needed to teach or host your own wargame. Should you use our materials or are interested in more of this research, please contact ICWG Series lead, Jacquelyn Schneider.

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    The Wargames That Prophesized America’s Defeat In Vietnam

    It is the early 1960s and America stands at a crossroads in Southeast Asia. President Lyndon B. Johnson is in the midst of a re-election campaign while attempting to grapple with an escalating situation in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government appears increasingly weak and unstable as the Viet Cong are increasing the tempo of their attacks. As the president weighs his options, many of his top advisers convene in classified rooms in the bowels of the Pentagon basement to play a series of wargames. These were the Sigma Wargames — a series of political-military simulations played from 1962 to 1967.

    September 24, 2024 by Jacquelyn Schneider ,Jacob Ganz via War On The Rocks
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    Sea Control 506 – What Wargames Reveal With Jacquelyn Schneider

    Hoover Institution fellow Jacquelyn Schneider discusses her article on what wargames reveal. 

    March 30, 2024 interview with Jacquelyn Schneider via CIMSEC
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    Never Give Artificial Intelligence The Nuclear Codes

    Jacquelyn Schneider, the director of the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, recently told me about a game she devised in 2018.

    May 2, 2023 featuring Jacquelyn Schneider via The Atlantic
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    Cyber Strategy

    Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider explains the importance of having a cyber strategy in national security, emphasizing the need to establish priorities, goals, and boundaries with our adversaries.

    April 4, 2023 by Jacquelyn Schneider via PolicyEd
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    Can War Games Really Help Us Predict Who Will Win A Conflict?

    From ancient Rome to Prussia and the cold war, these simulations have been used to understand human behaviour

    March 20, 2023 by Jacquelyn Schneider via Financial Times
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    research | Articles
    Articles
    Does Technology Win Wars?

    It is ironic that, despite two decades of U.S.-led conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, it took just a few months of Russia’s war in Ukraine to finally draw attention to the depleted state of U.S. weapons stocks and the vulnerabilities in U.S. military supply chains.

    March 3, 2023 by Jacquelyn Schneider via Foreign Affairs
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    Article Review On “Wargaming For International Relations Research”

    In “Wargaming for International Relations Research,” Erik Lin-Greenberg, Reid Pauly, and Jacquelyn Schneider present wargames as a method for international relations research.

    April 14, 2022 featuring the work of Jacquelyn Schneider via H-Diplo | ISSF
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    Events
    Wargame Design And Social Science

    The Hoover Institution hosts Wargaming: Its History, Application, and Future Use on February 16, February 23, and March 16, 2022.

    February 23, 2022 via Hoover Daily Report
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Jacquelyn Schneider

Hargrove Hoover Fellow

Jacquelyn Schneider is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Naval War College as well as a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Her scholarly work appears in a series of journals including International Organization, European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Journal of Cybersecurity, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Simulation and Gaming, AI & Society, PloS One and is featured in a series of books including Cross Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2019). In addition to her scholarly publications, she is a frequent contributor to policy outlets, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, NPR, BBC, MSNBC, CFR, Wired, Cipher Brief, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, Washington Post, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, National Interest, H-Diplo, and the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Schneider was a 2020 winner of the Perry World House-Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Policy Prize. She is also the recipient of a Minerva grant on autonomy (with co-PIs Michael Horowitz, Julia Macdonald, and Allen Dafoe), a University of Denver grant to study public responses to the use of drones (with Macdonald), and a grant from the Stanton Foundation to study networks, cyber, and nuclear stability through wargames. Dr. Schneider is an active member of the defense policy community with previous positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation. Before beginning her academic career, she spent six years as an Air Force officer in South Korea and Japan and is currently a reservist assigned to US Space Systems Command. She has a BA from Columbia University, MA from Arizona State University, and PhD from George Washington University.

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