ohOn January 6, 2025, American democracy is at a crossroads. Congress must certify the results of an election in which the loser refuses to concede. The Capitol is under siege by a wave of protesters who believe the election was rigged. Some of them are armed, and they are determined to keep their leaders in power. Similar groups are gathering in state capitols across the country. Parts of the National Guard in Washington, DC, and parts of the US military, including a few senior US officials, are on their side.
It’s a fictional scenario, played out in a “war game” simulation in a mock situation room with real government and military personnel. But according to a new documentary capturing the role-playing exercise, such a crisis of power — and a partisan division of the military — is a very real possibility in a politically polarized America, and one we need to prepare for. “This is not a theoretical proposition,” says Jesse Moss (Boys State, Girls State), co-director of “War Games,” now in U.S. theaters. “If even a small percentage of active-duty U.S. military personnel choose to, say, side with a losing candidate in a national election, they could destabilize our country and endanger our democracy.”
“War Games,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, recreates a six-hour event that will take place in a Washington, D.C. hotel room in January 2023. Veterinary Voice Foundationis one of several role-playing exercises developed in the wake of the January 6 attacks to help military and government officials prepare for worst-case scenarios: How would the U.S. government react if it were to happen again? And what if the president can’t count on the military’s support? One in five defendants in January In May 2021, 124 retired generals and admirals Open Letter They’re spreading the lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. “Think about the unthinkable,” says game producer Benjamin Rudd, whose experience of the collapse of institutional authority in Iran in 1979 viscerally recalls.
While other exercises, such as those recently led by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Democracy Futures Project, focus specifically on role-playing responses to Trump’s reelection, “War Games” barely addresses the issues at stake, instead examining the power and potential of political extremism in the US. The distance it takes by using footage from January 6 but not naming names gives it a new sense of urgency and clarity. “Sometimes it’s impossible to see what’s right in front of your eyes,” says Tony Gerber, the film’s other co-director. “And you have to find new ways to show people that, because sometimes you’re willfully blind to see what’s there.”
The exercise’s participants, a bipartisan group of military and cabinet members from the past five presidential administrations, must respond to what essentially amounts to a more organized version of January 6. The so-called “Red Cell,” developed by military veterans Christopher Goldsmith and Chris Jones, presents a multifaceted and shifting threat on the ground and online, while the Situation Room, comprised of a mock president-elect, former Montana governor Steve Bullock, and his team of advisors, must also deal with the information game. Jones and Goldsmith, experts on domestic extremist movements and understanding veterans’ disillusionment with the government status quo, based their mock insurrection group, the Knights of Columbus, on President Trump’s MAGA movement, the conspiracy pseudo-religion known as QAnon, and the far-right paramilitary groups involved in the Capitol storming, such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
Participants include former Senator Heidi Heitkamp, retired Major General Linda Singh of the Maryland National Guard, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Doug Jones, former Senator, and Elizabeth Newman, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump Administration. Participants must decide how to counter growing threats, including fake news reports, speeches, and social media posts encouraging insurrectionists to follow “real” leaders. Participants must also address a video of a senior official modeled after former Trump administration official and “Stop the Steal” rally speaker Michael Flynn, calling on the military not to follow the commander in chief. With the Washington National Guard in danger, should other National Guard troops be mobilized? Should the federal government step in to intervene in the attempted coup at the Capitol? How much force is excessive? And if and when should the president invoke what is considered the game’s nuclear option, the Insurrection Act, the power to deploy U.S. troops against his own citizens? (The filmmakers had full editing control but did inform Vet Voice of any potential security issues. “We didn’t want to give insurgents a manual for how to stage a coup,” Moss said.)
This final ruling is especially resonant given the destructive potential of this law if misused. The only mention of Donald Trump by name in the film is in footage of a January 6 congressional hearing, where former Oahu Keepers member Jason Van Tatenhove acknowledged that the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, had urged then-President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and promised that veterans would support him. “Regardless of the outcome of this election, this law is a power the president has and it’s a power worth considering,” Moss said.
“The film remains relevant and relevant in this election,” Garber added. “Issues like this don’t happen overnight. This has been brewing, growing and coming to fruition for years. As a nation, we have to ask ourselves why we got to this point.”
To that end, Gerber said, the film attempts to offer “an empathetic understanding of how young men and women become radicalized when they return home after serving overseas. “In between cutaways to real-time exercises, Goldsmith, Jones and game designer Janessa Goldbeck movingly discuss the real threat of extremism in the military, particularly for veterans struggling to reintegrate after serving in a war based on government lies and deception. Fewer and fewer civilians have personal ties to the military.They witnessed it in themselves and in their loved ones. “I empathize with the insurgents,” Goldsmith says in the film. “I understand why they went down that path, because I was there after I came back from Iraq.”
For the game’s participants, the exercise was a traumatic six hours, both unsettling and powerful in its preparation. The simulation had a “real, intentional utility” in terms of generating a report to share with policymakers, Moss said, but it’s also a way to work through the fear, anger and shock of what happened four years ago this January and what still divides the country. “These divisions, these fears, this extremism, they’re not over there. They’re here. They’re in our country. They’re in our families,” Moss said. The film offers “a kind of catharsis to deal with the trauma that we carry and to think, hopefully in a constructive way, about where we’re going.”
