this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Came here to say this. Turns out real life WOPR is nothing like a movie.
Where is this from?
The 1983 movie WarGames. This is the computer's conclusion after simulating every possible outcome of Global Thermonuclear War.
I don't know if we're doing spoilers for 40+ year old movies, but
spoiler
Isn't this really its conclusion after being told to play tic tac toe against itself? Then it learned from that and applied it to its global thermonuclear war simulations.To be honest, I recognized the screenshot and know the summary of the movie but I haven't actually seen it.
You should! Actually a pretty accurate depiction of hacking. He spends weeks war dialing every phone number in the range in order to hack the computer.
Story goes that Reagan got freaked out after watching the film and asked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff if it'd be that easy to hack into the US military. After a week of looking into it came the answer: “no, the problem is much worse than that”, and fifteen months after having watched it signed the confidential directive "National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security", starting the implementation of cybersecurity measures in the country's institutions.
It's on my list! Just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I think you should rewatch it sometime. it plays all the games in it's catalogue, it's not just applying tic-tac-toe to chess. skilled players of tic-tac-toe can force a stalemate, the only stalemate in nuclear war is mutually assured destruction.
It's admittedly been a while since last time I saw it, but I never mentioned chess. The suggestion to play chess in the screenshot is a callback to when the computer tries to suggest playing chess instead of global thermonuclear war earlier in the movie. The computer did not apply tic tac toe learnings to chess, and I never claimed it did.
sorry meant tic-tac-toe to global thermonuclear warfare
Thank you so much I'm going to watch it!
They did a sequel, too. It wasn't as good, but points out the 6 degrees of separation in connection with terrorism instead of MAD.
It's a fun classic.