On January 6, 2023, a group of former politicians and officials from America’s military and intelligence services convened to role-play what the country’s next insurrection might look like. The simulation, organized by a veterans’ group called Vet Voice, was set on January 6, 2025, but it was designed to look like January 6, 2021, on steroids. This time, an incumbent president had narrowly defeated a demagogic challenger, who was refusing to concede. Rioters weren’t just gathering outside the U.S. Congress but at state capitols around the nation. The defeated candidate’s unhinged military advisor was calling for resistance. The U.S. military, infiltrated over the years by white nationalists, was divided, and some soldiers were refusing to follow orders.
A political thriller in documentary form, Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber’s War Game follows the narrative of this simulation, showing us the breathless back and forth of the fictional president (played by former Montana governor Steve Bullock) and his advisers, the constant news “updates” (from a mock television channel created for the occasion), as well as the pretend insurrection leaders working overtime to inflame the situation, flooding the zone with social-media memes and ominous, threatening proclamations. We also see the nerve center of the whole exercise, where Vet Voice leaders come up with new crisis scenarios in response to the players’ decisions, all in an effort to, in their words, “stress test the national security system.” The film gathers suspense not just from what it depicts but also what it evokes: Anyone who witnessed the events of the real January 6 will find their stomach in knots, though admittedly some of us have had our stomachs in knots for years now.
Moss and Gerber clearly understand that the ticktock of this hypothetical insurgency will make for exciting cinema, but they’re also interested in how the people participating in this simulation got here. War Game’s most powerful moments come when it steps back from the events of this particular day to tell us more about some of the actual people involved. Among them are Kristofer Goldsmith and Chris Jones, two veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who are role-playing as leaders of the Order of Columbus, a fictional extremist organization modeled after the Oath Keepers and other real groups.
“I play myself, I just play myself in a different way,” says Goldsmith, who recalls joining the military soon after 9/11, only to realize he fought a war in Iraq based on lies. Unemployable and suffering from post-traumatic stress, he found himself drawn to insurgency but eventually became an investigator of America’s homegrown fascist movements. Jones is a former Marine who worked as a journalist and found himself covering the events of January 6. “Why the fuck was I shooting farmers in Afghanistan while you’re still breathing?” he remembers thinking after watching Trump’s rioters on that day. These guys understand the rage at the heart of these movements, but they also understand that any kind of counterinsurgency is doomed to lose once those in power start gunning down citizens.
There are more recognizable faces among those in the president’s inner circle, including former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp playing his senior adviser and former NATO supreme allied commander (and onetime presidential candidate) Wes Clark playing the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Former Alabama senator Doug Jones plays the attorney general, and ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok (already a target of the MAGAtocracy) plays the FBI director. You might notice that these are mostly Democratic figures, though the simulation claims to be a bipartisan one (Never Trump conservative Bill Kristol can be seen in the background among the various consultants) and Vet Voice is a nonpartisan organization.
The nature of the participants’ affiliations does make one think about what this exercise will really accomplish. Is it really possible to call this group bipartisan in any modern sense of the word when one of the country’s two major political parties has basically been taken over by the extreme right and now considers January 6 to be some kind of heroic rebellion? Is this group of thoughtful moderate Democrats and principled conservatives speaking to anybody but themselves? Can the War Game, played mostly by people who are out of power, really help anyone prepare for whatever insanity lies ahead of us? These are not knocks on Moss and Gerber’s excellent film, but they do add an element of helplessness to the events we are witnessing. The simulation may end, but the tension never unwinds. These participants will emerge unscathed, but it seems less and less likely that the rest of us will.
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