WarGames

**WarGames** is a 1983 film starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood and Ally Sheedy, directed by John Badham, written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and produced by Harold Schneider.

## Plot

During a surprise drill of a nuclear attack, many United States Air Force Strategic Missile Wing controllers prove unwilling to turn the key required to launch a missile strike. Such refusals convince John McKittrick and other systems engineers at NORAD that missile launch control centers must be automated, without human intervention. Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer, WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time.

David Lightman, a bright but unmotivated Seattle high school student and hacker, uses his IMSAI 8080 computer to break into the school district's computer system and change his grades. He does the same for his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack. Later, while war dialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California to find a computer game company, he connects with a system that does not identify itself. Asking for games, he finds a list that starts with chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker, as well as titles like "Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare" and "Global Thermonuclear War", but cannot proceed further. Two hacker friends explain the concept of a backdoor password and suggest tracking down the Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze," the first game listed. David discovers that Stephen Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher, and guesses correctly that his dead son's name, Joshua, is the password.

David does not know that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. He starts a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the Soviet Union. The computer starts a simulation that briefly convinces the military personnel at NORAD that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound. While they defuse the situation, WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the game, as it does not understand the difference between reality and simulation. It continuously feeds false data such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments to NORAD, pushing them into increasing the DEFCON level and toward a retaliation that will start World War III.

David learns the true nature of his actions from a news broadcast, and FBI agents arrest him and take him to NORAD. He realizes that WOPR is behind the NORAD alerts, but because he fails to convince McKittrick, he faces espionage charges. David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group and, with Jennifer's help, travels to the Oregon island where Falken lives. David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent and believes that nuclear war is inevitable, that it is as futile as a game of tic-tac-toe between two experienced players. The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to stop WOPR.

The computer stages a massive Soviet first strike with hundreds of missiles, submarines, and bombers. Believing the attack to be genuine, NORAD prepares to retaliate. Falken, David, and Jennifer convince military officials to cancel the second strike and ride out the attack. WOPR tries to launch the missiles itself, however, using a brute-force attack to obtain the launch code. Without humans in the control centers as a safeguard, the computer will trigger a mass launch. All attempts to log in and order WOPR to cancel the countdown fail. Disconnecting the computer is discussed and dismissed, as a failsafe will launch all weapons if the computer is disabled.

Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility and no-win scenarios. WOPR obtains the missile code, but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, finding they, too, all result in stalemates. Having discovered the concept of mutual assured destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), the computer tells Falken that it has concluded that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play." WOPR relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles and offers to play "a nice game of chess."