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As election day nears, many Americans are wondering how a bitterly divided country will handle another political transition.  At the Vet Voice Foundation ––the non-partisan, non-profit organization that houses my national security and defense think tank, the Institute for Informed American Leadership–– we have been wrestling with the possibility of another January 6th unfolding and challenging our imagination on how to prevent a future insurrection.  

At the end 2021, one of my fellow Senior Advisors at Vet Voice, Paul Eaton (a retired US Army major general), published an editorial in the Washington Post along with two other retired Army generals calling on the Defense Department to “war game” a future post-election insurrection so we wouldn’t be so caught off guard for the next one. These Generals were especially concerned about rising radicalization within the ranks of the active duty military, where even a small group of people joining an insurrection and refusing to follow the lawful orders of the President and commander-in-chief could pose a very real threat.

After the op-ed came out, Vet Voice decided to conduct a war game exercise ourselves. As an organization of veterans, we’ve seen this rising military radicalization first hand, and know it’s not something we cannot ignore or hand wave away as “a few bad apples;” nearly 1 in 5 insurrectionists were veterans of the armed forces.  With this in mind, it’s only a matter of time before we see radicalization spill over into active duty ranks. All it takes is one senior officer (like Michael Flynn) giving active duty members validation that rebellion is what’s best for the country and the potential for a military coup becomes terrifyingly real. 

With that in mind, we began to assemble our war game and set our focus on January 6, 2025. With our network we were in the unique position to put together a powerhouse group of participants for our Situation Room: Republicans, Democrats, and non-partisan independents, two former US Senators, a US Governor, a handful of retired generals, and veterans of the CIA, FBI, DHS, and DOD spanning multiple Presidential administrations. 

While we were fortunate enough to have these experts come together to work through this scenario (“coup prevention 101”, as former US Senator Heidi Heitkamp describes it) we wanted to have some sort of record of the exercise to look back on. We were expecting a straightforward taping of the simulation that we could share with our colleagues, policy makers, and national security professionals.. What materialized is a powerful documentary. Our CEO, Janessa Goldbeck ended up connecting with award-winning documentarians Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber. On January 6, 2023 at a hotel in Washington, DC, Jesse and Tony joined us for the six hour tabletop exercise, and their vision and storytelling resulted in WAR GAME - part documentary, part political thriller, and much more than what we had hoped for when we first decided we should “tape” the exercise.

I never expected to be in a film that premiered at Sundance, has played at theaters across the country, and that is now available to everyone on video on demand platforms. I’m glad WAR GAME is reaching so many people because the story it tells and the reactions we’ve seen at screenings remind us all of an essential truth: while there is still extreme polarization in the US, real threats must not be ignored.  As long as we put the good of our country above partisan divides, there will always be people who can come across party lines to work together to keep our country and our democracy safe. 

If you’ve seen War Game, feel free to leave a review on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes