Short Abstract

Participants are invited to experiment with wargaming as a hands-on method for exploring how security futures are materially enacted and collectively imagined. Wargaming—traditionally a military and policy practice for simulating conflict scenarios—serves as our site for critical engagement.

Description

Wargames typically unfold behind closed doors, where security futures are rehearsed out of public scrutiny. In these spaces, the future is predominantly imagined as disaster: as threats to be anticipated, crises to be managed, and catastrophes to be prevented. Dystopian visions become the default horizon of possibility, naturalizing security logics while foreclosing alternative futures and concerns. By making wargaming a site of collective experimentation, we ask: what other futures might emerge when we change the room, the players, and the rules?

Together, we will engage directly with the materiality of wargaming: moving pieces, making decisions under uncertainty, negotiating rules, and inhabiting speculative scenarios. Through this making and doing, we ask: How do games produce particular kinds of security knowledge? What futures become visible—or invisible—through their mechanics? How might we intervene in, subvert, or reimagine these practices from an STS perspective?

This is an experimental session—treating the game itself as a site of STS inquiry. The workshop will unfold through three interconnected phases:

Playing through: We begin by playing a simplified wargame scenario, experiencing firsthand how rules, maps, and game pieces choreograph particular ways of thinking about security threats, actors, and responses. Participants will assume roles, make strategic decisions, and navigate the constraints and affordances inherent in the game's design.

Opening up: Mid-game, we pause to collectively examine what's happening. What assumptions are inscribed into the scenario? Which actors are present or absent? What counts as winning? Through group discussion and by examining the mechanics, we trace how the game produces specific security imaginaries.

Repurposing and redesigning: Finally, participants work in small groups to hack, modify, or reimagine elements of the game. We'll playtest these interventions and reflect on how STS sensitivities and approaches can help understand wargaming as a crucial security practice worth investigating

No previous knowledge of wargaming is required. Limited to 12 participants.