Wargaming J6-2 - the NEXT J6
America panders to Terrorists
Washington DC 01 SEP 2024
America panders to terrorists. That is the key lesson of a fantastic new documentary film doing the rounds before public release. It takes viewers inside the Situation Room with real politicians, generals and lawyers advisers in a simulation of what might happen on J6-2. That is, Jan 6, 2025 when Maga’s highly visible plans for Coup 2.0 are unleashed on America. The game is compelling and reveals that after all this time, and everything we have discovered about the very real threat we face (a rapist, Putin puppet, who stole nuclear secrets, attempted a coup x 2 [Fed and GA cases] and defrauded everyone from God on down) - we continue to enable our enemies to attack us, instead of bloody well stopping them. When it comes to American Coups, “Fool me once” is NOT enough.
Why? Because ‘they’ are too much like us, for us to tell the difference. They are an old powerful ‘rich’ white man with a megaphone, brainwashed followers, terrified congressional enablers, and a compliant media that cant report a story to save its life. If ‘they’ were ISIS or AQ, no one would be concerned about their rights to mount a coup against America. They would be cut down with machine guns on the national mall and then everyone would go get ice cream.
NEWS FLASH AMERICA: The Bill of Rights Does Not Guarantee Your Freedom to Attack America.
Why do we act like stopping domestic terrorism is some horrible imposition on the rights of terrorists to attack us? The constitution supports minority rights. Supporting the 3% that want to destroy the constitution against the 97% who kinda like America, is taking things way too far. We are out of balance and it might just cost us the ballgame.
We still have not comprehended the implications of J6-1 if our actions since are any indication. Maga is a more dangerous enemy than ANY we have faced in our history. “Yes Virginia, even worse than the Virginians of 1860”. If this intro has outraged you… read on.. if you DARE.
At least two serious wargames have been mounted by think tanks to explore what the axis of autocracy and its local franchise has in store for America in Jan 2025 and beyond. When a friend alerted me to the documentary, I assumed it was a film made of a wargame covered in a recent article in the Washington Post run by the Brennan Center’s “Democracy Futures Project”. I was already planning to write about it because it has such an important message - namely multiple pathways still exist for domestic terrorists to derail the peaceful transfer of power. I was surprised to discover these are two different games. The fact that so much effort was applied by two think tanks to the same problem is illustrative of the crisis we still face.
[If you are aware of any other games please share the deets with us at the link.]
As the movie (and discussion panel that followed) was such an immersive experience, I will focus this commentary on the film and the lessons I drew from it. This is not to discount the very important Brennan experiment. I invite readers to explore the Brennan game for themselves. I am offering it as a gift article here - so non-subscribers can read it in full. I will not repeat the findings except to highlight one of its insights - that few people understand how so much of the system relies on political convention (IOW “gentleman’s agreement”) about how issues are addressed rather than the constitution and law. Why? Because even the founding fathers did not anticipate that a President and his party would become domestic terrorists seeking to destroy the constitution and the country.
Even the founding fathers did not anticipate that a President and his party would become domestic terrorists seeking to destroy the constitution and the country.
The games share some similarities but had different scenarios and testing regimes, highlighting different issues. They are both worth exploring in order to be exposed to more than one set of challenges as we head into the election and its inevitably contested and potentially violent aftermath.
What is a wargame?
—> If you know about wargames skip to the next section.
For those that don’t know, wargames are a ‘laboratory’ originally used by the military, now in use across government, to explore enemy (red) ideas and actions and test our (blue) plans and responses in a controlled environment (white). The lab can be a physical exercise with generals commanding troops engaged in mock combat at military bases and test ranges. In those cases focus is usually on troop/platform performance. Or it can be a thought experiment - a TTX - Table Top Exercise - without the troops - focusing on the why and how of decision making. Have you ever been to an off-site for work? A different environment, focusing on a topic your company does not do on a day to day basis? You get to see a side of people you had not seen before. Gray haired Susan from accounting turns out to be a badass in social media engagement with the youth demo? Thats a bit what a war game is like.
The key purpose of games is to avoid surprise. There are essentially two types of games. Creative and narrative. Creative are designed for discovery. Narrative are about telling a pre-determined story. Both have their purposes.
Games should be fun in the sense of being creative. When they are done well, wargames can be very enlightening, not so much about Susan’s quirks but about how groups think and act under pressure. When they are done poorly they can be a huge drag. I have participated, moderated, designed and facilitated my fair share of games. My specialty is creative free flow games with an emphasis on crisis action in response to black swans (usually WMDs). They are designed to genuinely test the system, opening minds to things not previously covered, and making leaders search for novel solutions.
My pet peeve is an over-scripted game designed to get the participants to follow a (usually plodding) narrative to a predetermined end point. Those kind of games are usually selling something - what to think - not how. Sometimes they are justified. They are designed that way to meet certain narrative milestones to explain a conundrum or test combat platforms in realistic contexts for a practical example.
The classic example of a creative game was Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC ’02). Red was commanded by Marine Corps three-star Paul Van Riper. The purpose of MC ‘02 was to test concepts for an amphibious invasion of Iraq. It had a huge real-world element - thousands of troops embarked in scores of ships. Van Riper unleashed a surprise attack - like a thinking enemy should. 19 U.S. ships were sunk, including the carrier, several cruisers, and five amphibious ships. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes,” Van Riper said. Needless to say the command did not appreciate this lesson, as it had fielded forces floating about with nothing to do when they should have been fighting a scripted war!
So they re-set the game and started over. Thankfully the Iraqis never had a Van Riper. To win wars, the military demands creativity and agility. Bureaucracies have a different purpose - to impose order and replication. As the US military is the biggest bureaucracy on earth (perhaps the Chinese have overtaken us - thank god we now have a fighting chance! :)) the tension between its mission - creativity, and its structure - color by numbers, can cause massive counterproductive friction. As was the case in MC ‘02.
Good games serve multiple purposes.
First, they stress-test the system.
Second, they anticipate and illuminate enemy courses of action.
Third, they force decision makers to think about things they might not otherwise have considered.
Fourth, they expose weaknesses - both obvious (known) and hidden (unknown) and demand they be addressed.
Fifth, they stimulate innovative thinking on ways and means to enhance defenses (or attack).
Sixth, they help foster the right mindset among decision makers - one that is agile, adaptable, ready to flex to any eventuality.
Finally, wargames greatest contribution is the elimination of, or at least erosion of, surprise. They generate mind-memory (think: muscle-memory) of how to think about an unfolding threat so it's not new and shocking, thereby channeling focus toward orderly solutions and away from panic on the day.
Following World War II, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz famously remarked that rigorous and repeated Naval War College wargaming had ensured “nothing that happened during the war was a surprise . . . except the kamikaze tactics.” Even Pearl Harbor was not a surprise in the sense that both Billy Mitchell (Army) and Pete Ellis (Marines) had independently predicted in 1924 a war in the Pacific would start with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Ellis was a graduate of the Naval War College gaming division and a student of Mahan.
Due to their utility, games are now conducted at the highest levels of government. Both of the games considered here were White House-level table top exercises. Both had similar structures and “players”. From the article on the Brennan game:
“Participants in our exercises included Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, independents and centrists. Many had held senior positions under Trump or a previous president. Among them were former Cabinet secretaries, former governors and state attorneys general, former members of the House and Senate, a retired ambassador, retired flag and general officers, a retired federal appellate judge, labor leaders, faith leaders, grass-roots organizers, members of the Brennan Center staff and C-suite executives.”
However, the scenarios and purposes were different. The film was much more scripted and purpose driven. As you can see from the above comments, this is typically the sort of game I loath. The Brennan game reads like a creative game. However, these two efforts were designed for different purposes. The Brennan game was for government professionals to learn how to make better decisions. The film was to educate the public about the dilemmas government will face if the peaceful transfer power is challenged once more.
Wargame - the 2024 Movie
A note on the following assessment
On Labor Day weekend I went to watch the film at the Landmark E St Cinema in DC. First, let me say a huge thank you to Major General Linda Singh USA Rtd, who came out to have a discussion with an audience of concerned citizens. General Singh, along with other participants in the game, are attending screenings all over the country conducting these engagements. This is an incredible commitment to civic life and is indicative of how seriously all the participants take the threat. Based on their questions, I was equally impressed by the audience. They were regular citizens (not policy wonks), who took time out of their lives to engage this uncomfortable and distressing subject matter.
Any criticism of the game in no way implies sanction on the motives or intent of the organizers. I do not know what happened in the game play beyond what is shown.1 I am cognizant of the possibility that some of the issues I raise below were part of the game but excluded for editorial reasons. What follows is why creating wargames is a complex business.
In the end, it make me think. It highlighted a critical challenge that we as a country need to address if we are to survive the ongoing Coup. Bottomline, that is the ultimate success of a game.
Game Set-Up
Purpose
The game was organized by the Vet Voice Foundation (VVF). The game was designed to explain what the VVF believe would be the impact the invocation of the Insurrection Act would have on the continued loyalty of the military and the population to the constitution.2
Essential Facts
The military is comprised of two parts - the National Guard and Active Duty Forces. There is an important distinction between them. The national guard (Title 32 in US law) is designed as an adjunct to state civil authorities, for assistance in natural disasters and the like, including civil disorder roles (assisting law enforcement). Members swear allegiance to the State constitution (and the US constitution).3
The regular and reserve armed forces of the Unite States (Title 10) are trained for combat operations overseas. They swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.
The distinction is designed to prohibit use of regular and reserve forces for combat operations within the United States. The only circumstances in which combat troops can be used is under the Insurrection Act. As the name suggests, this is to stop an armed seizure of national power by domestic anti-constitutional forces. Notably, not peaceful protestors outside the White House banging loudly on tambourines and blowing whistles (@SatireAP might be extraordinary annoying but she is not attempting a coup - quite the opposite as it turned out)
Fun facts
General Singh said that very few of the experts assembled knew one another before hand. Nor were they fully briefed on what was about to happen. The game took place on J6 2023 in the Willard Hotel where convicted terrorists Stone, Bannon, and Flynn had their “war room” on the actual J6. We are told this added major pathos to proceedings. The blue cell (President and advisers) did not have a support team - like red (enemy) and white (game control). So they were really on their own.
Participants were not told a documentary film was being made. It is not unusual for wargames to be filmed to facilitate in-house “hot washes” and after action reports. General Singh explained that each participant was individually mic’d and soon forgot about the filming as they got into the game. This is evident in the game play. They are genuinely consumed by events.4 As a result, it is a compelling film especially for those with no experience in national security. At a minimum, the public should be gratified how seriously military and political leaders take their profession.
Vital distinction between game world and real world
The sitting president is legitimately re-elected and the certification of the election is contested on January 6 by the losing side. Readers will note this is the opposite of the maga attempted coup in 2021 - where the sitting president lost and attempted a Coup d'état to cling to power.
This matters because (scenario 1) an illegitimate president using armed forces to destroy the constitution (stay in power) is a totally different kettle of fish to (scenario 2) a legitimate president using armed forces to quell a coup in progress by anti-constitutional forces.
Notably, J6 was neither of these things. It was unique (scenario 3) because an illegitimate President used his own paramilitary forces intermixed with a human shield of “protestors” to attempt to overturn the government. He actively prevented and delayed authorized US Government (USG) forces from responding. Ultimately, he judged he could only plausibly deny holding off USG forces for 183 minutes.
These distinctions are critically important and we will return to them below.
Situation
The setting for the game is the “Situation room”, where the President and his advisers are meeting to manage the crisis. There is a huge countdown clock dominating the room. The documentary is an edit of the 6 hours it took for the president and his advisers to work out a response that diffuses the crisis. During the course of the day, they are peppered with a series of escalating attacks that conclusively prove they are rapidly losing control of the situation. Law enforcement and supporting guard units are proving woefully insufficient to reestablish control against violent mobs.
This is designed to channel the President and his advisers toward having to make a call on the Insurrection Act. Should the President authorize the 82nd Airborne Division to deter, and if necessary defeat, a violent coup d'état in Washington DC? If he does, what are the consequences? A key question is unasked - if the President does not augment powerless USG authorities and restore order, how will the rapidly expanding and escalating crisis be checked?
Players
Blue Cell - The President and his advisers
Red Cell - Anti-government forces
White Cell - Game control
Basic Game Play
On J6 2025, 10,000 demonstrators gather around the US Capitol.
We soon discover that similar demonstrations have been coordinated at State capitals.
It is unclear how many are violent, but the parameters of “last time” are implied through the use of actual J6 footage.
The coup leader is not the losing presidential candidate but a retired general and leader of a political movement cloaking itself as a religious group.5
He is supported by an active duty 3 star in uniform.
Both appear in the media calling on troops to join the coup to place the losing presidential candidate in office.
The civilian politician the coup leaders support remains strangely quiet.
Authorized forces (law enforcement and DC National Guard) are in place on the national mall doing their jobs when some appear to join the extremists. The only direct evidence of this “split in the military” consists of members of the DC guard “reportedly waiving demonstrators forward” past checkpoints toward the Capitol.6
This is realistic in that at moments of crisis initial reports are often confused and contradictory.
Similar hostage situations appear immanent in Washington DC and other states.
An electronic “heat-map” is shown with “hot spots” popping up in scores of capitals.
With Washington collapsing, in Phoenix AZ, the state legislature is taken hostage.
The President calls the governor. She asks for “all possible federal support” before getting mysteriously cut off. Much is made of the fact she does not specifically request the invocation of the Insurrection Act. (America is run by lawyers).
Red skillfully deploys “cognitive warfare” against the USG with powerful effect.
They flood the media with propaganda, mis- and disinformation, confusing everything. They spam social media with various outrages - foremost being videos of “US troops” shooting non-violent protestors exercising their 1A rights.
Blue spend 5h and 50min trying to understand what is happening and work out a plan to stop the coup. They are mired in debate and take no substantive action either in the infoscape (media) or landscape (on the ground) until the last 10 mins of the game.7
‘Tiananmen Square at the Smithsonian’
‘Rivers of blood on the Mall’
Play Implications
The red cell has a whale of a time ratcheting up the stress on the Situation Room.8 As people start speaking quickly over each other and voices start to rise, a white cell facilitator turns to the game designer and says “we’ve pissed off a lot of senior ranking folks from the last 5 presidential administrations”. With a Cheshire cat grin the designer responds theatrically “just doing my job”.
Red take advantage of the natural confusion arising from the crisis and spice it up with disinformation to maximize the chaos and disorientation in blue cell and among the public. They show video of the “US military” mowing down peaceful protestors, violating their 1A rights. This is not actually happening. They use clips from other countries, events and periods in time to create the impression they want.9 Red’s purpose is to inflame the public to gain support for their cause.
The game ‘reality’ on the ground is quite different. Red forces are violently attacking the US and state Capitol’s. They have defeated law enforcement and Guard defenders and will win if they are not stopped. As their successes grow, Red’s leaders, the retired general and an active duty 3 star - in uniform - make video appearances calling on the military and the public to join forces with Red to ‘resist government tyranny’.
America is on the brink of a dictatorship backed by a military junta - once the anti-constitution side of the military defeat their brothers and sisters in arms.
As the clock counts down demands on the President grow to make a decision.
The USG has an irrational institutional fear of upsetting an angry enemy that is in the middle of attacking America.
Take Aways
This wargame exposes a big issue that America needs to address. We pander to domestic extremists. We are terrified of upsetting them. We appease them at the expense of national security. The USG acts like it believes resistance to aggression somehow causes or justifies the aggression. Put another way, the USG has an irrational fear of upsetting an angry enemy that is in the middle of attacking America. This is born of an assumption that if the government forcefully resists attack, the people will turn on the government - not the attackers. This is ludicrous. The best example of this phenomena was the stunning revelation that the DOJ did nothing about the leaders of the J6 coup for over a year for fear of making the situation worse. How much worse could it get? We narrowly escaped a full blown coup d'état. Subsequent government inaction only served to encouraged the threat that continues to flourish.10 This thinking displays a dangerous lack of faith in the American people to know what is right and to support their legitimate representatives engaged in their foremost duty - protecting the constitution from all enemies.
Pandering to extremists does not appease them. America used to know that. When you face a growing malevolent threat, it feeds on your fears. You cannot wish it away. Inattention and inaction only serve to fuel its insatiable appetites. The USG has left the entire enemy leadership structure at large, free to terrorize the American population. They have been frantically busy doing just that - in plain sight! They are again deploying a well worn narrative that the election - that has not yet happened - is corrupt and any outcome other than one that is favorable to them is proof of that corruption! “Paging Franz Kafka, please come to Mar-a-lago to collect your cookie”.
They are again deploying a well worn narrative that the election - that has not yet happened - is corrupt and any outcome other than one that is favorable to them is proof of that corruption!
Had Trump and his cabal of criminals, congressional enablers, and Russian-paid lunatic trolls, all been rolled up immediately after J6, the situation today would have been radically different. This is what Germany did as soon as they discovered a major national coup d'état plot by a group analogous to maga. Instead, Americans put the coup plotters on primetime television and apologize for the time pressures of the 4 legal cases confronting just the leader, let alone his cabal of inmates! All of this leaves the law-abiding pro-constitution public feeling like hapless victims trapped in a cage slowly sliding into water. The enemy even has the gall to say criticizing their hateful attacks and coup preparations is causing danger to the community! This is what happens when you appease a monster and entertain their doublespeak. (The media are treating this election as any other. A contest between normal political parties with simple policy differences.) The Germans know better. They learned the hard way. We should know better too, considering the blood and treasure we spent helping them fix and recover from the first time they were plagued by extremism.
‘You cannot reason with a Tiger when your head is in its mouth’. WSC
Let’s get a little clarity here. America is founded on the constitution. You either support it or you do not. You can hate America and say so all day long. The constitution legally protects your hatred of it. No matter how vile your views are, America gives you a pathway to implement them. If you want to change America you can join a political movement and convince your fellow citizens (who have equal rights to your own) to elect you to destroy their way of life.
However, anyone that is in favor of using force to impose their will on the constitution, is by definition, an enemy. Period. Attacking elections, institutions of government, and the peaceful transfer of power is attacking the constitution. It is an act of war and needs to be treated accordingly. If ISIS was behind J6 they would have ALL been shot dead on the spot and America would have invaded at least 2 countries in the Middle East for good measure.
Yet we have not treated Trump and maga as an enemy engaged in war against the United States. Instead the USG has largely surrendered its powers to protect the constitution and the people by being over-solicitous to fascism. America is detached from reality.
Even if Harris/Walz win, democracy is not guaranteed. In the absence of a Harris/Walz landslide, that will extinguish the waning energy behind the maga insurgency, Trump, his lawyers, and paramilitaries will fight in the courts and on the streets. They are fighting to stay out of prison and to seize control of a superpower. They are not going gently into that good night but they will happily send you there.
Trump is the most dangerous enemy the United States of America has ever faced in its history.
Trump is the most dangerous enemy the United States of America has ever faced in its history. In the civil war there were clearly delineated lines between homogenous sides to the conflict that were separated by time, space and culture. None of this applies today. Trump leads a large hyper-active terrorist network, complete with substantial paramilitary forces (drawn from a kaleidoscope of groups who have dreamt of this moment for decades) engaged in a life or death insurgency spread all over the country. They are supported by a fanatical political base who have long passed the point of reasoned debate and civil discourse. His forces do not have to invade and conquer any territory. They are everywhere. They just have to seize power to terminate the constitution. Doing so will give them control of the entire country, lest they be stopped.
That, should be the lesson of this wargame. Yet it isn’t. The lesson is appeasing the terrorists will make them just go away.
The final phase of gameplay unfolds as follows:
Blue spend 5h and 50min trying to understand what is happening. They are mired in debate and take no substantive action either in the infoscape (media) or landscape (on the ground).
The inaction is the most important fruit of the game. The depiction of lawyers arguing about possible future negative interpretations of possible government course of action - all while the Capitol is ransacked by terrorists, is incredibly realistic. It seems pretty clear Parkinson’s Law was in effect. Had the clock been set to 12 hours, they would have made a decision at 11hrs and 50mins.
Once the decision is made with a few minutes left in the game - the outcome is assumed to be successful. However, nothing changes on the ground. With no changes to the force posture, or ROE, as if by magic, the USG forces that were moments ago overrun and collapsing, suddenly gain total victory. All the red “heat-spots” on the threat map simply wither and disappear.
No explanation is provided as to how the decision is connected to this miraculous outcome. It is non-sensical.
You might wonder why the wargame gives in to the terrorists?
Iraq and Afghanistan. More specifically, the failure of counterinsurgency operations of the US military. The producers, we are told, are all veterans with experience on the front-lines of those wars. They are motivated by a concern that the president and his advisers will be tricked into falling into a classic-trap set by insurgents. Namely, provoke “Goliath” to over-react (the Insurrection Act). When the American public witness the full might of the US military turned against their fellow citizens peacefully exercising their constitutionally protected rights to assemble and protest, a whole country of “Davids” will be born overnight. That will ignite an insurgency that will consume America, just as the veterans witnessed it consume Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having seen its power overseas, the ‘David v Goliath’ myth holds powerful sway over those American veterans who believe (hope?) America is ripe for insurgency. America has broken its social contract with veterans. We treat veterans abysmally. This is reflected in abnormal rates of veteran divorce, poverty, homelessness, and obscene rates of suicide. The VVF knows America has a nascent insurgent problem within the ranks of disgruntled veterans. They fear this cancer has spread into the ranks of active duty and guard forces.11 It is a tragic reality that some disgruntled conservative American veterans have fallen into violent right wing extremist groups that fervently maintain that the US government is the enemy. At the institutional level they are victims. At the personal level we are all responsible for our actions but it is possible to empathize with their fury especially when so much American patriotism is bumper-sticker thin. “Thank you for your service” does not count for much if you live rough. If you really care, go find a homeless veteran, clean them up, feed them, and give them a roof, until they can stabilize and get better.
The Venn diagram of disgruntled conservative veterans, citizen militias, christian nationalists, sovereign citizens, klansmen, and maga, is virtually concentric. Their mythology is magnified by resentments over past USG operations against extremists. They all observe the same litany: Ruby Ridge (1992), Waco Siege (1993), Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Bundy Ranch stand off (2014) and the Bundy Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Occupation (2016). Among these groups are “accelerationists” who think they can provoke the US government into overreaction - “accelerating” the advent of the inevitable second civil war. McVeigh, a veteran of Gulf War I, was an accelerationsist. The OK city bombing was revenge for Waco that he hoped would trigger civil war II.
Trump holding the kick-off of his 2024 campaign at Waco was a direct order to all of these groups to ‘stand-by’. Holding most of his campaign events in ‘sundown towns’ is speaking to the same people. Extremists understand these messages even if the general public do not. If more people understood this we might not pander to his every whim.
The Government is not the enemy
The idea that government is the enemy of the people has been cultivated at the highest levels of the conservative movement for over a generation. The disestablishment of American civic virtue began decades ago under Reagan and has intensified under every successive conservative Administration and majority Congress.
"And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
was replaced by
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”
A steady erosion of faith in the constitution has followed ever since.
There were no Timothy McVeigh’s before Reagan. The entire point of democratic government is to solve problems for the greater good base on consent of the governed. If government leaders tell the public government is the problem and the public believe this nonsense, eventually the public will seek a radical alternative. Maga has many fathers, this is one of them.
America must reject this trap
There is just one problem with this line of reasoning. It does not yet fit the current situation. The United States of America is moving towards, but is not yet fully ripe for, fascism. The pivot around which the game’s failure turns is legitimacy. Legitimacy of the actors and forces involved. Despite Reagan and his subsequent lessers working to undermine the role of government in civic life (which is often confused with the role of democracy by low information citizens), America has not yet fully abandoned the idea democratic government exists to protect the people and solve problems. The wargame gets these wired crossed and may leave people thinking the USG should never use force to resist terrorism. That would be a monumental mistake.
The first rule of wargame club is not to fight the wargame. I am going to have to break Rule 1. First, in the game scenario, USG forces are not mowing down peaceful protestors. That is just Red Cell propaganda. In the real world, a President has to know whether shots had been fired and by whom against whom. They would get answers. Perhaps initially wrong or incomplete, but you can be sure if a guard unit (loyal or splinter) was shooting the public, the President would soon find out.
Furthermore, a future J6 will be treated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE), like the “State of the Union”. In other words, it will have huge attention and resources applied to it especially in the full knowledge of what happened the last time. The government will surveil the event, the media will have hundreds of cameras, and every participant will be live-broadcasting. The kind of propaganda play the game suggests will not work. It would elsewhere - see more on a different scenario in the postscript.
Second, as described in the game, USG forces are acting with restraint while being violently attacked by insurgents armed with assault rifles and more (think drones and IEDs). They are losing the battle. This is why they need reinforcements. Denying them reinforcements merely empowers the terrorists.
Third, an assumption of the game is use of combat troops to support the guard and law enforcement would result in innocents being mown down in cold blood. Clips flash on the screen of Kent State. This is misdirection. Kent State ≠ J6. In the game, if they were allowed to, legitimate security forces would be engaging armed terrorists not peaceful protestors. Any accidental casualties would be assessed by the public in line with the threat of the alternative of letting the terrorists gain control of the country. The public can be relied upon to back the blue, not the coup.
Fourth, the scenario is not an illegitimate dictator trying to use the army to cling to power. That would have fit the game’s purpose. On the contrary, the legitimately elected authorities must reinforce lawful security authorities to restore order or lose the country to fanatics.12 That completely changes how the world would perceive the USG response, even if it escalated into significant violence to put down an armed revolt and even if that revolt included splinter military units. It might be twisted for propaganda effect at the time and more especially after, but saving the Capitol during a vote count from an armed insurgent attack ≠ Waco. More on this below.
Fifth, there is a bizarre inversion of concern for how terrorists and their supporters would react to their terrorism being halted, with a corresponding lack of concern for the safety and security of the law abiding general public who deserve their electoral will to be respected.
A recent poll revealed that about 2.71% of the population (~8.925m Americans) believe Trump “should seize power even if he loses”.13 The wargame brilliantly illustrates the overwhelming solicitude paid to these assholes compared to the 97.29% of Americans who support the constitution. We are forgetting the people that matter. The constitution protects minority rights but that ≠ the rights of terrorists. They must be arrested or shot.14
Sixth, America ≠ Iraq. America lost counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan because our political project in both places was culturally and politically alien.15 In other words, we - the occupiers and by extension the locals we supported - were illegitimate. What we tried to do is the equivalent of the Taliban invading Alabama, picking a local Imam as the governor and instituting sharia law. How do you think that would work out? When the local population rejected our system of government and resisted our occupation, we escalated military operations (we didn’t realize we had already lost the war). That only inflamed the situation further resulting in a spiral into a major insurgency aimed at us - but sold as a war against the new regime. We put the regimes in place - there was no difference. We could not understand why all the tribes of Afghanistan/Iraq would prefer the Taliban/Iran and Iran backed militias over us. America spun the subsequent violence as ‘civil war’, or ‘Sunni v Shia conflict’, instead of accepting we screwed up and were being forced out. America’s veterans bore the brunt of these strategic mistakes on behalf of us all. They deserve better, but violence is not the way.
America is not an illegitimate authority in America. At least not while we still have a democracy. That might change if maga dictatorship seizes power. The only problem with the idea of a pro-constitution insurgency developing in a maga-dominated America is the power of the executive branch is so overwhelming it is hard to see an insurgency prevailing. No matter how much Britain and France might want to come to our rescue, they would not make it within 100 miles of the coast.
Finally, if any other enemy of the United States attacked the peaceful transfer of power, no one would have any issue at all with a robust USG response. If we would not be scared of using force to stop an ISIS or AQ attack, why treat maga any different? Maga is, by an order of magnitude, a far greater threat. ISIS, AQ, and Russia - none of these are remotely capable of capturing and subordinating America to their will. Maga is half way there. They have proven they will use force to get the rest. MTG repeatedly says not using arms on J6 was a mistake that will not be made again in the future.
We have cultural blind spot that prevents seeing maga as the enemy. The prevents us from taking lawful proactive measures to ensure we prevent, deter and defeat that threat. If this movie does anything, it exposes this cancer at the heart of American national security thinking.
Postscript - COUP 2.0 - “Red Guards” - A Much More Likely J6-2 Scenario
Back in the real world, the maga plot to seize control of America grows by leaps and bounds. As before, there will be a two pronged coordinated political and paramilitary program of action.
Political - DENIAL of election results - in other words red states will simply fail to certify - either outright or by manufacturing electoral “crises”. They will flood the zone with propaganda and lawyers. Giuliani grade moron lawyers have been shunted to the side. This time heavy weights will be deployed. Cases are already underway to disrupt and confuse. Post Nov 5, that will transition to delay and overturn - to buy time to force the system into crisis.
Paramilitary - the paramilitary strategy will support the political/legal program by videoing the “discovery of irregularities” at polling places, vote drop box locations and vote counting and certification centers.
As noted above, the core Maga rationale is as follows:
The election - that has not yet happened - is corrupt and any outcome other than one that is favorable to them is proof of that corruption!
Even maga can crack the code that all eyes will be on DC on J6-2. Some of them might have even worked out that Kamala Harris will be the certifying her own win and that she will be well supported by the USG of which she is still Vice President.16 So instead of storming the Capitol with goons, Red states will simply refuse to certify the election. It is a strategy of political denial. Not full frontal assault. At least not in DC where the USG will be ready and waiting.
Obviously they would not do this if they thought Trump could win. It seems quite clear Trump’s “election strategy” is planning around what to do after the loss. They will work the refs and the system in advance in order to say “I told you so” after he loses.
Here is an excellent explanation of the Certification denial strategy by @DariaRoseReal (Twitter)
Today’s evidence of the coup plot comes via reports of 3 maga election officials in GA insisting on new rules for the entire system just 45 days out from the election. Everyday has such revelations from all over the country. Maga is nothing but industrious.17 This particular sub-plot insists on a time-limited hand-count of all the votes in the state. That will effectively deny the states electoral college votes from Kamala Harris.
No doubt GA and some other states will refuse to certify their state’s tallies. If enough red states play this game it could cause a real problem. They will then try to force the issue into the House of Representatives where red states have a voting majority.
Paramilitary operations will avoid DC where the USG will be expecting them to repeat J6 - they are stupid but they are not that stupid. It will all start around voter intimidation tactics all at a very local level. “Protecting” voting drop boxes and counting centers. No doubt propaganda will be created over fake issues at these locations to fill the compliant news media with colorful stories to distract from what’s really happening. This is where the game’s disinformation program has highest salience.
Next a Red state governor, like Wheelie down in Texas (as a friend maliciously calls him), will respond to one of these bogus stories by calling out the TX guard “to protect” the vote. When of course the exact opposite is the objective. At that point, the DOD will rescind the order and issue new orders sending the troops back to their barracks. Wheelie will have his jus ad bellum.
With the vote not fully counted at the Capitol and Red Guard units being deployed in key states, things could get out of hand. Will Title 10 forces fire on guard units? Will they go to war against say, the TX Guard? Thats a much more interesting, and frankly realistic, scenario.
All guard units are made up of citizens with jobs, lives, homes and family ties, in the local community. To grossly over-generalize, a guardsman is a [insert state here] first. A solider is an American first. Title 10 forces, including the reserves, are of the people, but unlike the guard, they do not have officially divided loyalties. They spend all their time in a federal work/life culture - one that is committed to defense of the US constitution. This might seem pedantic, but trust me, it’s not. It’s a vital point. It’s about identity.
Thats why Trump, in true Tiananmen square fashion, called in reinforcements from outside the national capital area, including prison guards, to protect him when he ran to the bunker because some peaceniks were bashing their tambourines too loudly outside his window. Outside forces are more likely to crack heads because they have no allegiance or feelings of neighborliness towards the people they are beating. Declaring martial law under the Insurrection Act is an extension of this concept and uses forces designed for combat.
Red state governors have played with fire in setting their guard’s against US forces in recent years over compliance with federal regulations. This is not just political posturing. They have been deliberately testing the system and pushing the boundaries of reasonable conduct out into far right field. It sets a tone and opens a door to deeper divisions should red state politicians want to up the ante - say after an election the outcome of which was legal but not to their liking.
If a “split in the military” develops, it is more likely to evolve out of the splits red state governors have already created and continue to inflame. Whether their guards have a greater allegiance to their Governors or the US Constitution is a critical question that is not explored in the wargame. It is likely to be a serious fault line running through America when maga attempts coup 2.0 between Nov 2024 and Jan 2025.
Participation of law enforcement is mentioned as non-controversial. “Military” activity is more of a gray area. In the game, the national guard is mentioned but the involvement of active duty forces is more opaque. The 82nd Airborne (Title 10) is pre-staged at Andrews and awaits orders. Civilians may not understand the difference but it is very significant. It goes to what the forces concerned can and cannot legally do inside the US. The game deliberately blurs the line to make its point.
This concerns the VVF because Trump attempted multiple times to invoke the Insurrection Act while ordering the military to shoot at civilians engaged in peaceful protests outside the White House. Separately, VVF members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the impact US military activities had on the populations of those countries - typically creating more insurgents, not increasing support for the US based regimes.
Will Title 10 forces fire on guard units, or go to war against say, the TX Guard? Thats a much more interesting, and frankly realistic, scenario. See the postscript.
This was a risky but smart move by the producers. You don’t want politicians and generals playing to the cameras. They are all intolerable hams desperate for the limelight (oh shut up - you now you are). However, not telling high profile public figures the real purpose of the cameras could have blown up in the producers faces as deceptive and disrespectful. Think: law suits!
The genius of the game design was cloaking the “insurgents” political agenda (overturning the legitimate outcome of the election) in a fake religious guise. This reflected some of the game designers experience as front line soldiers fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They understood the enemy used the language of religion to cloak purely political objectives. In the US context, cloaking things in religion evokes all sorts of 1A dilemmas. At least on the surface. In reality, it is a red herring. But a very useful one because even government leaders could easily get caught in IO dilemmas of pushing back against/oppressing “religious expression”. Here’s a hint: overturning the government for Jesus, Allah, Buddha or the flying spaghetti monster - does not make it any more just or legal. Try voting on behalf of your deity instead.
I remember watching J6 in real time and seeing law enforcement do the same thing to the red hats and have never seen that footage again. I have not engaged in hours of exhaustive searching, so it may be there. I am not trying to start a conspiracy here! We have enough of those. The point being that such thing have already happened.
It is important to note that events on J6 were so prolonged because the President refused to do anything in order to buy his paramilitary forces time to accomplish the mission of stopping the certification of the election and kill Mike Pence as a warning to all the lawmakers present to comply with the dictator. In the game, the President and his team are ready willing and able to act with speed. But they do not.
People in the cinema must have wondered if I was a terrorist as I cackled every time the bad guys kicked blue’s ass. Not because I am pro-maga… I think we have established thats not the case… but because I am pro-red cell in every game. I am a Hugh believer in learning by mistakes and disproving orthodoxy. Like Van Riper, I love screwing up everyone else’s well laid plans with chaos, surprise, and outrage. It throws them off their game. That, after all, is the point of war (and wargame) - to learn from mistakes. You’d be amazed at how many officials get upset when you disrupt their scripted teddybear’s picnic - because at heart they are bureaucrats, not warriors.
This is also real world - enemy IO operations do this all the time. Typically, only intelligence experts would notice that the uniforms and equipment are wrong, the location foreign, and/or the event depicted happened years ago. (Or in the age of AI - that it happened at all.) Government leaders rely on the intelligence community (IC) to sort this out for them.
The game skillfully shows how propaganda can be manipulated. However, it goes too far in suggesting propaganda alone will win this battle. Nothing is that one sided. In the game Blue failed to message. It would be wrong to assume that a government trying to stop (not mount) a new J6 would stay silent for 6 hours. The failure to defend the country from attack, in the game and IRL, is also due to an intermixing of domestic political, religious, and 1A rights, and the wrong “lessons learned” from USG failures in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Full credit to the VFF who know this and are trying to fight it. As a veteran organization, the VVF they are uniquely placed to take on this task. They see the same mindset here among maga veterans that they saw among the insurgents they were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ashli Babbit, an air force veteran, is the poster child for this phenomena. Babbit was highly unstable and needed help. Instead, she was manipulated by maga, both in life and in death. She was an active participant in J6. She was warned by a police officer with a drawn gun not to jump the final barrier between lawmakers and the surging mob. In a fanatical frenzy, she did not comply and paid with her life.
Had the scenario been reversed, and a dictator was using the Insurrection Act to order combat troops to “restore order” against actual peaceful protestors - as was attempted outside the White House on June 1st, 2020 - all security forces would have had an opportunity to decide for themselves whether such an order was unlawful and thus they could disobey.
This number is derived as follows: Polling found that “a quarter of Republicans think Trump should seize power even if he loses”. According to ballotpedia “A total of 35.7 million registered voters identified themselves as Republicans”. That results in 8.925m Americans violently opposed to the constitution. Of those, how many are military aged males, with the capabilities and intent, committed to combat operations? A few hundred thousand maybe. It is possible a significant number of those are serving in the military or guard.
This will shock people. Now think how the sentence would read if the terrorists were ISIS. No one would blink. This is the point.
The American political project being imposed on those countries were culturally, historically, politically and socially completely foreign to the populations involved. In other words, the leaders we attempted to install and the voting we created to legitimate them were totally illegitimate in the eyes of the local people. You cant install democracy.
Of course this is a perfect maga propaganda line - “Harris protects her own sham outcome with the US Army” etc..
Trump was so proud of them he called them out by name at a rally. So naturally, everyone looked into who they are and what they were up to. Summary: No good.
As a consummate Red-Teamer, I appreciate the multi-layered analysis that this discussion provides with respect to the War Game. Having participated in (and guided a few) TTXs and wargames over the years, one thing that I've come to notice is the lack of economic analysis. In other words, if you want to make any sort of predictive statement on the conduct or outcome of war, it is extremely useful to begin with an A-to-Z narrative of the economic storyline, versus the shooting. Put another way, while you and I may find sufficient the framing of this election as a choice between democracy and dictatorship, there is (unfortunately) a large swath of the population that either doesn't care, or doesn't understand why that's a bad thing. In order to drive the message home with conviction, pro-democracy strategists would do well to "connect the dots" for voters and explain what will happen on a macroeconomic level, and how that will wreck their everyday lives as they know it. I am absolutely convinced that the ultimate goal of Project 2025 is a return of America to a modern day version of the gold standard era (via crypto), thereby making us subservient to the likes of Musk and Thiel. I'm sure I'm not alone in this assessment, but I'm not sure how well the broader electorate really appreciates the consequences of underestimating the existential nature of the threat.