An Analysis of A Farewell to Arms by John Carlin
May 2007
A Farewell to Arms
By John Carlin
For those on the ramparts of the world's sole superpower, the digital winds are blowing an icy chill through the triumphant glow of the post-Cold War.
People in Washington play lots of games, but none for higher stakes than The
Day After. They played a version of it in the depths of the Cold War, hoping the exercise would shake loose some bright ideas for a US response to nuclear attack.
They're playing it again today, but the scenario has changed - now they're preparing for information war.
The game takes 50 people, in five teams of ten. To ensure a fair and fruitful contest, each team includes a cross-section of official Washington - CIA spooks, FBI agents, foreign policy experts, Pentagon boffins, geopoliticos from the National
Security Council - not the soldiers against the cops against the spies against the geeks against the wonks.
The Day After starts in a Defense Department briefing room. The teams are presented with a series of hypothetical incidents, said to have occurred during the preceding 24 hours. Georgia's telecom system has gone down. The signals on
Amtrak's New York to Washington line have failed, precipitating a head-on collision.
Air traffic control at LAX has collapsed. A bomb has exploded at an army base in
Texas. And so forth.
The teams fan out to separate rooms with one hour to prepare briefing papers for the president. "Not to worry - these are isolated incidents, an unfortunate set of coincidences" is one possible conclusion. Another might be "Someone - we're still trying to determine who - appears to have the US under full-scale attack." Or maybe just "Round up the usual militia suspects."
The game resumes a couple of days later. Things have gone from bad to worse.
The power's down in four northeastern states, Denver's water supply has dried up, the US ambassador to Ethiopia has been kidnapped, and terrorists have hijacked an
American Airlines 747 en route from Rome.
A Farewell to Arms
By John Carlin
For those on the ramparts of the world's sole superpower, the digital winds are blowing an icy chill through the triumphant glow of the post-Cold War.
People in Washington play lots of games, but none for higher stakes than The
Day After. They played a version of it in the depths of the Cold War, hoping the exercise would shake loose some bright ideas for a US response to nuclear attack.
They're playing it again today, but the scenario has changed - now they're preparing for information war.
The game takes 50 people, in five teams of ten. To ensure a fair and fruitful contest, each team includes a cross-section of official Washington - CIA spooks, FBI agents, foreign policy experts, Pentagon boffins, geopoliticos from the National
Security Council - not the soldiers against the cops against the spies against the geeks against the wonks.
The Day After starts in a Defense Department briefing room. The teams are presented with a series of hypothetical incidents, said to have occurred during the preceding 24 hours. Georgia's telecom system has gone down. The signals on
Amtrak's New York to Washington line have failed, precipitating a head-on collision.
Air traffic control at LAX has collapsed. A bomb has exploded at an army base in
Texas. And so forth.
The teams fan out to separate rooms with one hour to prepare briefing papers for the president. "Not to worry - these are isolated incidents, an unfortunate set of coincidences" is one possible conclusion. Another might be "Someone - we're still trying to determine who - appears to have the US under full-scale attack." Or maybe just "Round up the usual militia suspects."
The game resumes a couple of days later. Things have gone from bad to worse.
The power's down in four northeastern states, Denver's water supply has dried up, the US ambassador to Ethiopia has been kidnapped, and terrorists have hijacked an
American Airlines 747 en route from Rome.