[Movie] Wargames (1983)

Short: This is the movie every school in America should be showing about AI and cold wars.

Medium: This quirky 1980's movie about a kid who makes a connection to an AI made to learn games nearly causes World War 3 just wanting to play a game.   A very young Matthew Broderick stars in a suprisingly deep piece that has aged exceptionally will.    It's also just plain fun.

Maximum Verbosity: First and most importantly, there is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) glitch you need to be aware of if you are looking to stream this movie, because if you add a space "War Games" you aren't going to find it and instead have to deal with a documentary, and what looks to be a direct to video sequel of this movie with entirely different actors that made my soul curdle a little inside to see it.

Second, and let's just get this out of the gate right away; HOLY COW I don't know how I couldn't see the weird paralells between Matthew Broderick's character in this movie and Ferris Bueler's Day Off.   Specifically, the bit around hacking his grade and hacking the grade of his would be girlfriend.  But it doesnt end there; you see Bueller's mannerisms around his parents are NOTE FOR NOTE identical to the characterin war games.   Furthermore, the parents are eerily similar (different actors) but seeing WarGames again makes me think that this kid who saved the world in War Games has a secret life of being Captain Awesome in High School and probably running some secret organization that does good in the world and makes it a better, more awesome place.

"Strange Game Professor Falken, The Only Way to Win Is Not To Play."

(Spoilers)

This is one of the most iconic quotes in literature and has always stuck with me humans understand the concept of futility.  Joshua (or WOPR) is a learning machine set up in a mainframe that plays games all day.  Professor Falken lost his young son and tries to compensate for that loss by making a machine that learns from its mistakes.   But he quits in disgust as the machine is turned into a War Game simulator by the Pentagon and goes into hiding.   David (Brodericks character) hacks into the game randomly seeking numbers with his antiquarian computer and finds the Pentagon system that THEY CONNECT TO RUN NUKES WITHOUT A HUMAN IN THE MIDDLE.

Sound familiar anyone?

The thing that is so fascinating about Joshua is how well written it is; it thinks just like an LLM, hallucinates, adjusts its behavior around minor inconveniences like death (it literally doesnt understand the concept) and has to be taught that no one can win a nuclear war.   You'd think that is self evident, but the fact is that there were actual dipshits who thought such a thing was possible.   Meanwhile, speaking of dipshits, we have idiots making automous murderbots with no real safety mechanisms and doing the same thing we learned and then forgot about landmines all over again.   Even today, we find unused ordinance from WWII buried in random places where buildings have to be evacuated and the xplosive disarmed.   But easten Eukraine is going to turn into a robopocalypse dystopia as drones are discarded and forgotten for decades long after the conflict is over.

It is so vitally important to have human beings connected to systems of destruction and yet literally within a few years of gaining the technology we're doing it all over again.  I'm very sympathetic to Ukraine and hope they win, but I do admit it is an absolute mistake to create autonomous drones (and they are taking precautions but necessity is forcing them to tak emore and more radical steps.).  War is hell, but enslaving and abusing and humiliating machines that we claim to own, make as smart as possible and then arm is just...batshit and I can think of absolutely no better movie than this one to prove that point.