The Schar Strategic Gaming Project (SGP) is an interdisciplinary “living laboratory” previously hosted by the Center for Security Policy Studies (CSPS) that unifies the University’s diverse national security and institutional modeling capabilities. By fusing the best practices of traditional strategic gaming with advanced simulation techniques, SGP embarks far wider than wargaming to explore a host of highly relevant problems and settings. Both leveraging and moving beyond traditional, rational-actor models of analysis, SGP’s games and exercises vividly simulate the human and bureaucratic friction that actually drive crises. SGP serves as a venue where policymakers, researchers, students, and the public can grapple with the complexities of a fragile international order, producing actionable insights that strengthen deterrence, alliance durability, and even democratic norms.
SGP’s remit extends beyond the traditional siloed study of conflict. By partnering across multiple academic centers, the initiative creates a comprehensive testing ground for escalation management and decisionmaking under pressure for a wide variety of crisis phenomena. The project employs a rigorous “Cycle of Research” approach, using purpose-built strategic gaming vehicles for established best practices and cutting-edge technology to generate hypotheses whose testing and analysis yields prescient, relevant, and implementable policy insights. This “safe-to-fail” environment builds indispensable experience for students entering public service while offering seasoned government leaders a secure venue to stress-test strategies against “unknown unknowns.“
SGP uses a combination of best practices drawn from traditional strategic gaming and cutting-edge technological realism enhancements. As vehicles for these techniques, SGP principally employs demonstrated game frameworks along with those in development by the team. Beyond this, game design is one of the SGP team’s core skill sets, and client collaboration is a must to determine the mechanisms that will explore the phenomena of interest, resonate with participants, and yield useful insights.
Staffed by a team of dedicated strategic gamers, SGP draws on a core group of Schar School security studies faculty supported by a cross-disciplinary network of experts from the Costello College of Business and external partners including the U.S. Army War College, the NATO Defense College, and the Joint Staff.
SGP’s deep reservoir of expertise supports the design and execution of high-fidelity simulations that address both traditional grand strategic crises—such as escalation in the Taiwan Strait or the Baltic Sea—and emerging de-stabilizing phenomena, including cyber-physical attacks on energy grids, biosecurity failures, complex humanitarian disasters, and the proliferation of emergent and disruptive technology.
The Schar Strategic Gaming Project can support your team’s analysis, education, and training goals. Click the button below to contact our team and set up an exercise custom-built for your unique needs!
