Offline with Jon Favreau - “WarGames” with Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes join Max to explore how 1983’s “WarGames” predicted the internet era. The film is a fascinating time capsule of Reagan era tech optimism, nuclear war doomerism, and Matthew Broderick’s puckish charm. Ben dives into the foreign policy behind the movie, drawing on his own experience traveling the country with Obama and a briefcase of nuclear codes. Lovett reminisces about 80s computing, marvels at how technology has changed since then, and talks shop on tic-tac-toe. This and more on Offline Movie Club: The Sequel! For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

I'm not saying war games ended the Cold War. He's not saying that. I'm not saying that. It's on the table. I'm saying that there was this kind of pop culture tip from like the jingoistic version of things to the like, let's like for the good of humanity, get on top of these weapons and, you know, figure things out. And I think this is kind of right at that hinge point where you could see that turn happening. Yeah. Because it's wholesome and patriotic in a Reagan era way

while having a message that is like, hey, let's not let the nuclear weapons kill us all. I'm Max Fisher. I'm John Lovett. I'm Ben Roots. This is the Offline Movie Club. Every episode we discuss one of our favorite movies and how it reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the internet.

Guys, we're kicking off our second round of this. We did six of these early in the year. People really liked it. So we are back. This is the first of our second round of six with some fun surprises ahead. This week we are talking War Games, the 1983 family blockbuster in which Ferris Bueller fights Chat TPT for control of America's strategic nuclear arsenal until they discover the power of friendship and join forces. Strange game.

The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? Guys, it's a strange podcast. The only winning move is not to pod. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something to think about. Well, we're going to pod anyway.

All right, Ben, let's kick it to you to start things off. What do you think makes this movie important for how we think about technology and the internet? Well, I think this movie taps into like our deepest anxieties that technology is going to kill us all, right? I mean, that's basically the premise of the movie. You know, as someone who's begun to start to think about how AI, you know, could pose different threats, the two biggest threats actually that people look at for AI are, do we really want AI involved in nuclear command and control? And will the robots ever get so

smart that they'll decide to turn against us and kill us all, right? And essentially, that's part of what this movie is about. I mean, it foreshadows, it's an amazing bridge because it's very Cold War. It's very like late Cold War, right? It's got that 80s vibe, the revival of anxieties about, you know, potential nuclear war between the u.s and russia that were emblematic of the early reagan years uh it's got i mean just we'll get into this but just massively perfect 80s background to everything that happens in this movie the noises yeah so the names even general beringer great general you know all the character all the character actors are like guys that were in every movie between 1977 and 1985.

And yet, like at the same time that it is very much of that time, it completely, it was bizarre to rewatch what was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Because it's completely about artificial intelligence. It's literally about a supercomputer that decides it'd be fun to take everything over. So, it's simultaneously of the time and incredibly prescient. Yeah, it's very prescient in a way that decides it'd be fun to take everything over. So it's simultaneously of the time and incredibly prescient. Yeah, it's very prescient in a way that feels very recent. Yeah. John, what do you think? So obviously what makes the movie interesting, what made it special,

is that it made people think about technology in a way they hadn't thought about technology before. But the actual threat in the movie, yes, it's ostensibly this new technology, this hard-to-understand technology, which now we look back on and see as prescient but would have been novel. It's the people around it. It's the incompetence and the malice of all the people around it. Because this is, yes, it is about a supercomputer deciding to cause a thermonuclear war and how to stop it. But really, it's also about a group of people who just need to yank a plug from the wall and whether or not you can convince them and why it would be so hard to convince them to do it for a combination of, you know, a lack of understanding of this technology, fear of their enemies and the

way in which they are maniacally focused on their enemies and just simple incompetence. And bureaucratic. Bureaucratic. Bureaucratic. Right. Yeah, there's something very timely about the way they are kind of caught between the simultaneous, the allure

and the danger of AI, even as they understand both of those and they kind of find themselves leaning into like, well, we need it because it's better than the alternative and it's worth the risk. And then just specifically, the way that they frame the AI feels very current to right now.

So part of what I think makes this movie really important is I think this is kind of, not just represents, but is a real pivot point in popular culture perceptions of computers and the internet. This is actually the first movie about the internet, which I didn't realize until now. And I was like looking into this. I didn't know that either.

Yeah. 1983 is the year that the ip address was invented right you can argue that 83 was year zero for the internet this is right it was the dawn of the internet they just invented tcp ip which is what expanded the arpanet to popular usage that's the baby we got to go back in time and kill yeah yeah you've been trying to kill the wrong somebody should have unplugged that trying to kill the wrong baby somebody should unplug that thing the baby we need to kill i'm so sorry it's al gore and i really i'm really sorry to him because he seems like a lovely guy um i do think there's an amazing irony about this

movie that we will get into that it gets so much so amazingly right about the internet hacking automation ai computers that is like more and more pressure every year but the like core idea superficially at the heart of the film about nuclear weapons i think is just like completely false and it just gets totally wrong we're gonna hurt out john i'm ready i'm ready i'm looking forward to that portion strategy yeah we'll get it we'll get a cot for you if it gets a little yeah yeah um all right well let's get into what is the biggest thing this movie gets right i feel like there's so much this movie gets right. Ben, anything for you that kind of jumped out? Well, I mean, we've

touched on this, but I'd say one, foreshadows hacking culture. Two, foreshadows the internet. I think what it also gets right, though, is we talked about the technology, but also to bring together John's comment, too.

The Dabney Coleman character is like the Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg. These computers give us instant access to the state of the world. Truth movements, Soviet missile tests, shifting weather patterns. He's just, he's sure that technology is better than human beings. He's sure that it's going to make everything better. And so this kind of, the other thing gets's right is the faith in technology with no consideration of any of the downsides of technology, right? So he sees all the upsides, right? There are these men, and they're all men in silos who have to turn keys to launch nuclear weapons, and we can't ask people to do

that. Well, but he doesn't consider, like, well, what could go wrong with this technology running our nuclear arsenal, you know? And so to me, it gets the entire kind of spectrum of how we've turned over our lives to technology, right? And in addition to kind of foreshadowing the concerns and anxieties that people have about what happens when we lose agency to technology. Yeah, it's a big movie that I feel like Lena Kahn's FTC would really enjoy about the dangers of unregulated, ungoverned technology. I've got to ask, Ben, because you were involved in national security policymaking for a long time. The General Berenger character, the cigar-chomping general who shows up in every 80s movie about anything in the military. All right. Flush the bomberss movie about anything in the military. All right. Flush the bombers.

Get the subs in launch mode. We are at DEFCON 1. DEFCON 1. Come on. That guy's real, right? He actually exists. We have a little more woke military these days. But no, like, I think what it gets right to, though, is a, and here I will nerd out a little

bit, like the kind of generals you know strategic command is our nuclear weapons command and it's a very particular kind of officer that decides that they're going to that's where they're going to channel their ambitions you know so because Curtis LeMay the guy who first founded it was famously I think we could say kind of a psychopath

because it's not like you know commanding men and women on a ship or an air squadron or, you know, army marines. You're sitting and, you know, literally gaming out nuclear war and taking care of like nuclear warheads. Like that's your responsibility. And that does lead to kind of a strange type of person. No offense to anybody. I mean, but it's just...

Well, it's also, there's a brain-breaking paradox at the core of it, which is we must be here to prove that in the event that we were attacked, we'll deploy it as well. However, if I ever exist in the time between those two attacks, the morality has completely changed and we have to ignore that fact completely. I will say there's something, one funny Obama anecdote that I thought about was I was in a bunch of these meetings about nuclear weapons and it was always about some strategy review, nuclear posture review. I won't get into

the weeds of it. And we were Obama was usually pressing to kind of liberalize our nuclear weapons policy right? I got no first use of nuclear weapons and we won't go into those bombs. Max and I can do it offline as it were. But one time he stood up after one of these conversations and he's't go into those radicalisms. We'll calm. Max and I can do it offline, as it were. But one time,

you know, he stood up after one of these conversations and he's like, I just want everybody to remain aware that this is a crazy

conversation we're having. You know, it was a very Obama thing to say. So like, we're in the situation room, he stands up and he's like,

before I leave this room, like, I just want everyone before you leave here, I want the last thing you think about that this is insane that we're talking about this, you know, and like, you do need to have

that perspective, you know? Well, there's there's this anecdote about even Dick Cheney when he first became defense secretary in the 80s, 90s. Anyway, when Dick Cheney became defense secretary, that he had this briefing at the Pentagon where they're just walking him through the nuclear war plans for what is the retaliatory strike. And he was like pacing around the room because he said, this is crazy. We're going to drop 20 warheads on every major city to what end, which of course is the conversation that has existed around nuclear weapons since they've existed. And the funny way it shows up in here is the McKittrick character. Like he's the Dr. Strangelove in that he is actually being like, well, this is the war plan

and we're going to follow it through. And of course, like every time we portray that in movies, we recognize how crazy it is. The 80s of it is that it's a fun romp instead of like Dr. Strangelove or Failsafe where it's absolutely terrifying. Well, you know, two things I'd add to that are one, Reagan apparently got those briefings and that transformed him from a hawk to someone who wanted to almost eliminate all nuclear weapons with Gorbachev at a summit, right? A few years after this movie. And the other

thing is that this movie comes out the year that the day after it comes out, an iconic TV movie about what a nuclear war could do. And when the no nukes movement was, you know, in full bore. I mean, so it was very of the time in that way. Yeah, it is also, you know, the movie opens with this drill in which these men are in the silo and they're shaking and they won't turn the key. Yeah. Right. Sir, we are at launch. Turn your key. Sorry, I'm so sorry. Turn your key, sir.

And the Dabney Coleman is like, we have to find a way to stop this humanity from interfering with this process. And so they turn to technology. And then the technology, it steps in to be like kind of like a god child, right? So that it has like the power of a god. But then over the course of the film, basically starts, you start to realize that it is named after a child, that it has the logic of a child. And so it is meant to, obviously it's like, it's technology. And so that's what made it interesting. But if you look at what role it plays,

it plays the role of an all powerful child. Yeah. And they have to figure out how to teach a small child to understand the morality that we're all trying to get ourselves to forget. Right. And I don't know,

there's something about, there's something about that, that I feel like, there's something about that that I feel like, there's a reason this movie, which took off like Wildfire, did so. And I think it's about more, I think it's that, like put the technology aspect of it aside, the way that it uses technology to tell a story about like basic moral values you forget in these moments, which is I think what a lot of these conversations

about global nuclear war end up being like, all right, so everybody, check your brains at the fucking door. We're going to do strategy now. It's a great point about the terrifying, all-powerful God child, which is an idea that of course goes back to like Isaac Asimov in 2001

and Hal and this computer that is like, its job is to look after them, but just over interprets its programming because but because it's so powerful, it then kills all of them. And it is amazing how that is just an idea that has been around since before we even had computers, but continues to come back and to feel more and more prescient every time we have a new thing that AI is involved in, whether it's a small thing or a big thing in our day-to-day lives, because it does seem somehow inherent to this idea of a quote-unquote thinking program. Yeah, I do think that's part, if I were to say what is prescient about this movie, is that it captures the fact that people look to technology to get out of their human flaws, and then they end up writing the human flaws into the machines themselves. So that's one thing that I think is very sort of forward-looking about it. What is the motivation for the creator of this AI? It's like a human story of loss,

and that this genius is motivated by some trauma that he can't expel. And to your kid point, I mean, Matthew Broderick gets into this whole mess, right? Because he wants to play computer games, right? Like that's why he like hacks into this whole system and finds the global thermonuclear war. And that's what Joshua, the computer, just wants to play computer games. And so in NORAD, right, when all the generals can't figure out what's happening, it's like Broderick, because he still has kind of a childlike mind, can somehow understand how to trick this childlike AI into, oh, I'll have to play a crappy game TikTok to learn about nuclear strategy. Anyway, I think you're right.

There's something in there about how there's like a wisdom in childhood as well as a malleability, you know. They haven't been programmed. Yes. They have to. And there's something fascinating about the timing of this where it both feels absolutely terrifying that these computers and machines are starting to exist and maybe it will destroy the world. But also it's like a fun game that is kind of exciting. Like I think it's not for nothing that this is a like goofy, fun family thriller that is around a 16-year-old who wants to play computer games. And it's like, the way people talk about computers in this movie is excited about them. Like, there's that scene when he's locked up at NORAD.

Do you guys remember this? The nurse is outside. Yeah, that's cool. And showing the computer to the guard. And she's like, I can look up any piece of information on this. And the guard is like, that's really cool. And there was this moment where there was this new thing that everybody was really excited about. Like this is a year before the Apple 1984 ad. On January 24th, Apple computer will introduce

Macintosh and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984. Well, there's also like the, and this is felt very 80s, like the two nerds. Like when Broderick goes to like, you know, he's trying to figure out how to get in there. They were like the two absolutely stereotypical. That's how people associated computers with like the absolute extreme nerds, you know. And that's changed, right? Like at some point it kind of became cool to like be, you know, hacker types and whatever. But there's this kind of sense of like computers are moving from being only the domain of the, like the love interest, Broderick's love interest is kind of a stand in for like a normal human entering the computer world.

And it's like, oh, this is cool actually. Like at first Broderick's embarrassed, like my room's going to be embarrassing because it's all set up to be like a computer nerd instead it turns out being like cool like so it's that it's that movement 84 ads a good one because it's like it's about to enter the mainstream you know and that well and the thing that they portray when he goes to that academic computer lab and this is the scene where he's talking to these two guys about like how do I hack into the system and they're kind of like a little bit goofy and And then one of them is shouting at the other. That is something that was like a very real and specific thing in tech circles in the West Coast in the early 80s.

And Margaret O'Meara, who's a historian of Silicon Valley, writes about this, about how the culture of Silicon Valley in the 70s and into the 80s was drawn from this like, it was the misfits who couldn't work at the big tech firms in Boston

because they were like a little too tough to work with. So this like this guy, William Shockley, who's kind of the founder of Silicon Valley, was known as very difficult to work with. So this is like both a stereotype and people who were there for it will tell you this is really what it was like. But you're right. It was that moment was leaving the lab and it was kind of leaving universities. But when it ended up in the bedroom, it was still this huge specialized hardware that was like really difficult to use. Were you guys on DOS? I was getting some big DOS flashbacks to this. I had like a, I mean, I had a flashback because I had an Apple 2C was the first one I remember. And it was this, like I wasn't smart enough to deal with DOS, but there was this universal video game platform that looked exactly like it was the blinking cursor,

and then you were controlling it with letter keys on the computer. It could move something around. So to me, it captured the early video game, no color screen, and yet it was still the most interesting thing in the world to do. You know, you're just kind of like moving some cursor around the screen. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was for like, we had an Apple 2C or an Apple 2E and it was for games. And also like similar to like when Facebook starts, what is the purpose of Facebook to find a reason to use Facebook?

Yeah. Like why are we making a wall and posting? Well, because that's, we're trying to figure out why we're here. And like, that's what a computer was when I was a kid. It was like, the purpose of this device is to understand why you have it. And that's what the games are for, because that gives it a purpose. so the part of the movie when they start like really engaging with joshua in earnest and they're kind of they're trying to persuade joshua to not destroy the world basically but joshua doesn't know there's a difference between the real world and the computer simulation i just could not believe i hadn't seen this movie in a few years how current that feels with everything that's happening with chat gpt right now like the

idea that it can't differentiate simulation data from actually acting on that data out in the real world even falcon at one point refers to the like phantom soviet launch that's happening as a hallucination which is of course what we call it now when chat GPT hallucinates. General, what you see on these screens up here is a fantasy computer-enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles. They're phantoms. I actually almost wonder if that was not a coincidence. Because this movie, according to some things that I've read, coined a few terms. Like firewall apparently did not exist in computing before this movie

just because it was like at a moment where the terms were kind of coming into use. So it wouldn't shock me if that was something that kind of fed into our discourse around its day. But this idea that like every conversation they have with it is this weird slide into surrealism and this kind of like, you know, at one point they're in the war room right and they realize that what's happening on the board is a simulation and not real life but the movie almost edges into this kind of like surrealist question of like what is the distinction between the two and do you get lost between the digital creation and the real world like it felt to me is a very much like living on the internet when does ender's game come out which also deals with this i think it was in the 90s i did you read

those i loved those books when i did not read them but i know the story okay so i read the wikipedia of ender's game so does that help no that's enough yeah it is in this connects to your point john which is that they fed all the data into like the very scenario planning for nuclear wars. And so it's operating off of data in a way that human beings couldn't. But with no understanding of the consequence of what it's doing, which is exactly the same thing with any artificial intelligence. You can feed it data that tells it there's huge consequences, but that's not the same

thing. That's why the human being couldn't turn the key. But, you know, the whopper, Joshua, could have easily launched every warhead in the U.S. arsenal. Sounds great. I love it. It's also just the lasting impression on audiences comparing nuclear war to tic-tac-toe in a way that is so understandable. Like, I have to think that that influenced people because forever I associate the two. I think of, I see those two things playing out on the board, tic-tac-toe, tic-tac-toe, tic-tac-toe,

nuclear war, nuclear war, nuclear war. That had to be something that stuck with people and shaped how they thought about this idea forever. I have to say, for a movie that, a lot of it is pretty basic 80s movie storytelling. The end scene where you see the nuclear missiles going back and forth on a screen and it's just more and more of them. You see the explosions and then the tic-tac-toes flashing. It's both like whatever writer came up with this tic-tac-toe comparison is absolutely genius.

It's smart. And then the filmmaking is like incredibly powerful because you're seeing what represents millions of people dying. And yet it's this kind of beautiful light show on a screen, you know? So this, we can move into like what the movie gets wrong because I think this is a really, I think it's both an incredibly apt comparison

that is right at like totally right as a commentary on the absurdity of nuclear war and the unwinnability of it but i mean maybe this is just the incorrect lesson that i took from it as a kid watching this movie i was like this is my education on mutually assured destruction and why it means that nuclear war would never actually happen unless by some accident like what portrayed in the movie because nobody would ever want to do it but i feel feel like the more that I have kind of learned about the actual development of nuclear strategy and what has actually happened is that mutually assured destruction is kind of a myth in the sense that it is not actually something that has restrained the nuclear powers at any point. And there's this whole school of thought now

among people who study nuclear history that throughout this period, especially in the 80s, when supposedly both sides are restrained in the 80s, when supposedly both signs are restrained by mutually assured destruction, they're both trying to break it. In other words, neither of them is treating it as tic-tac-toe, and they're treating it as a game of chess that can be won. And I didn't realize until recently, mutually assured destruction was coined as a joke. It was not actually intended as a strategy. It was two Rand people in the 60s who were trying to point out the absurdity of the idea that using nuclear threats against one side could deter the other because they were coming out of three near misses. There was the Berlin crisis, there was a near miss

in the Korean War, and then there was a Cuban missile crisis. And they were trying to point out that there is no such thing as one side deterring the other. If you look at it, Max, I mean, mutually assured destruction is more a concept of arms control than of nuclear weapons, you know, offensive nuclear weapons thinking, in the sense that you have the development of nuclear weapons through the 50s, and then these near misses with the Cuban Missile Crisis, right, in which everybody's getting freaked out, we're coming too close. Then you have detente, right? So then you have the U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiating the first SALT treaty limitations. And what they, what arms control exists to do is to try to create sufficient balance between the types of weapons that the U.S. and Soviet Union have and how they're deployed so that they're kind of roughly have parity so that you're kind of accepting the premise that neither of us can win. So arms control is almost kind of forcing the superpowers to say, like, we're going to limit these such that, and balance them such that neither side can win.

Now, this period in the early 80s is when that's fraying, because the U.S. has become afraid, in part because Reagan tried to scare everybody, that the Soviet Union's pulled way ahead, and they can actually win a nuclear war. And we're starting to do things like deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe so we can hit the Soviet Union faster, which feels like a strategy to win a war. And then it's in the mid 80s with the INF Treaty, which eliminates all

those intermediate nuclear weapons, both the US and Soviet unions, that we return to kind of parity so that nobody can win. With Reagan's Star Wars as the scary thing, if we have a missile defense shield, we're trying to win a war, right? So it kind of, there's been this tug of war throughout nuclear weapons of like, is the goal to have like kind of the equal amount built and deployed so that nobody can win

or is the goal to get an advantage, right? And that's why it's actually an arms control thing to have mutually assured destruction. Now, I'll shut up about nuclear weapons strategy, but this reminds you that it takes human thing to have mutually assured destruction. Now, I'll shut up about nuclear weapon strategy. But this reminds you that it takes human beings to introduce mutually assured destruction. It doesn't naturally kind of create itself. That's true, that the natural momentum of having these weapons kind of encourages a permanent escalation towards trying to win a war in order to prevent the other side from winning it first. It's like your General Berenger.

If a military commander's objective is to try to figure out how to win a war with the weapons they have. It's political leadership who has to say, no, like, let's try to balance our arsenal so nobody will fight this war. I mean, this movie is kind of the mirror image of Failsafe. Have you guys seen this movie? 1964, Sidney Lumet. Oh, it's incredible. It's been kind of forgotten because it came out like literally the same month as Dr. Strangelove. And it's a very similar plot, except it's a political thriller instead of a satire. But

it's got, it has a Herman Kahn character who's like Dr. Strangelove is based on this real guy, but he's played by Walter Matthau in Failsafe. But it's pretty much the exact same scenario as War Games, where there is a mistake in the American computer system that they believe a Soviet attack is incoming. So they launch a counterattack. But then the plot of Fail Safe is what do they do when they realize their counterattack is a mistake? And are they now forced to commit to following through on it, which we get really close to in this movie too. What's different is that the moral is kind of the same where it's like the logic of having nuclear weapons leads to this confrontationalism and it's like trying to win an unwinnable war trying to win it tic-tac-toe

but what's different is that in failsafe they conclude that therefore it is going to lead to it and that's terrifying and the message of war games is well everybody is going to come together and we're going to realize the absurdity this and that's because it's a summer family movie well you yeah i mean that's yes I think the biggest, yeah, a bunch of generals staring at a screen and they're like, oh my God, we've been idiots. Can you believe nuclear weapons were a mistake? It's funny though, like, I have never, my

experience of watching war games as a kid is to find the movie, there's a sadness to it throughout. There's a sadness to Matthew Broderick and there's just a sadness even to the resolution. Just the sense of like, look what we've built and look how fragile it is. Because even with treaties, even with safeguards, even with an understanding that neither side wants this war, the existence of these weapons and the natural flaws of human beings means that we are always at this very moment subject to an accident, to a fly in the machine that causes this all to go terribly wrong.

And the fact that we have been living under that reality for 40 years since this movie and the decades before, and we just can't ever seem to actually find a way out of it is, I think it's sad. We've gotten weirdly passive about it too. You're not for it?

No. Like to be like seriously in the moment for a second here, like what I remember at the 80s is being hyper aware of nuclear weapons, right? And it was like the number one issue in politics. Like you couldn't, you'd have to address it if you were like running for president. And even as late as 2008, Obama comes in.

The first thing he does is negotiate a new START treaty, like a treaty with the Russians. Now it's like, we don't even think about these things. It's oddly normalized. There are all these nuclear weapons. Pointed at each other 24 hours a day, right now, ready to go. Right now. Right now. There's less treaties than ever before because the US and the Russians have each successively pulled out of treaties.

So there's less arms control than at any moment ever since, like, beginning of arms control. More nuclear weapons or, you know, more nuclear weapons states than, you know, certainly when this movie was made. And real war is happening. You know, like a war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, both involving nuclear weapon states, a flashpoint in Taiwan. Like, we need to get back to the 80s

where we like actually worried about this shit. Where it was in pop culture. Yeah. Well, there was... Hey, this is not a great status quo. There was...

The one shift after 9-11, there was a lot of public... Dirty bombs. Dirty bombs. Concern about dirty bombs. There was... They made the movie Dirty bombs. Dirty bombs. They made the movie The Sum of All Fears,

which is about a nuclear weapon planted... The Clooney movie, too, when... Oh, The Peacemaker, yeah. That's about terrorists hijacking... I think that was in the 90s. Great movie. But the terrorists using nuclear weapons to spark a global war. Right, yeah. The idea of a state using nuclear weapons has weirdly disappeared

from our pop culture, which is, I think maybe it is just because it's so funny. Why do we feel better now than we did in the 80s? I think it's because we've grown up with movies like this that have, and I'm not putting, I'm not saying Matthew Broderick is going to be responsible for global thermal nuclear war if it happens, but it could, one could make that case. Yeah. That we've just like, this is a 40 year old movie about this threat so if it's been around

for 40 years it must be fine i feel like that's the conversation i have with people when i'm trying to get them focused on nuclear weapons yeah which is like really fun at parties people love that when you bring that stuff well even now it's like the movie about nuclear weapons is of recent years is oppenheimer which acts like it's something from the past you know like uh you know it's something that happened that's not over yet when in fact actually the last scene in that movie is him being like

these are going to destroy the world right right okay so to we've gotten I would say slightly heady to bring it back down

a little bit another thing this movie gets wrong guessing someone's password from their personal history huge thing in the 80s all over 80s movies that would never work

that's not how passwords work well not anymore not anymore. Not anymore. I mean, look, you know, it's not even Joshua with a zero for the O. Or an at sign for the A. Joshua exclamation mark. Yeah, not even Joshua exclamation mark.

I'll tell you where it gets, the couple things I, why is there like a Tor and Norad? Like, like, the whole plot device rests on the fact that like, there's literally,

and it's literally like a bus that pulls up as if it were in front of a museum and a bunch of like totally random, normal people wandering around the command center of the U.S. nuclear weapons. So the national security guy and me, like that got my back up a bit,

as did the father eating raw corn. Is that, I don't know that. I thought that was fun. This A&D vitamins. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah, the tour of NORAD felt a little off to me. I would love to take a tour of NORAD. I think that would be great. I don't, when I used to work at the times, they would big revenue drivers. They would do these guided tours where they would have like the reporter would take you through. Oh, I think you, like, cruises to Alaska. Oh, there was a scandal around one of those. Somebody got canceled on one of those.

I think maybe that was correct. One thing that the movie gets wrong... Oh, I'm just going to go. Yeah, let's move past that one. One thing the movie also, I think, gets wrong is this was still the moment where the better the computer, the more, um,

light bulbs, it would have on it. You need the flashing. You need the little flash. That's how it computes. It was the time, the flights, it was the time between Star Trek and modern computing where it was still like

the bigger and better the computer. That thing, this thing's gotta be like fucking Times Square. How do you know it's smart? You can't know that there's a person, there's a person's mind in there. Red and yellow bulbs flashing. There's actually, there's a person's mind in there red and yellow bulbs flashing

there's actually Joshua is in there yeah a little 12 year old kid on the terminal it's like a big washing machine too that rattles

it is funny how much movies used to have to do to tell audiences like now there's things happening inside the machine at this point

like anytime text is on the screen the little beeps that they used to do yes I would love to bring back. It would be so cool to have those little beeps. When does Terminator come out? 92?

No, that's Terminator 2. Oh, you're right. Judgment Day. Yeah. So what, when is Terminator? 84. 84. So next year. So like, just interesting visions of like what, because that, Terminator is about, again, an artificial intelligence launching all of our nuclear weapons and sending this guy back.

We're almost afraid of the right things. So, Falcon makes a point about this when he's kind of talking about, like, human beings being eclipsed. And he has this monologue about, like, well, we eclipse the dinosaurs. And he says, honeybees are going to eclipse us? And I simply don't know where he got that. That's a very strange theory. I don't think I've heard anyplace else. Yeah, I will say that I do think is something that the movie gets right about this kind

of a tech person, which is like. He's got some takes. Well, this also is like, yeah, man, totally. We're on a billion year timescale. I guess what we do now doesn't really matter. Yeah, I guess make your computer kill the world. Yeah, that's true. The way that he's kind of removed from all of it.

Thanks a lot, pal. Don't let the door hit you. There's an amazing thing about Falcon, too, though. There's a guy named Jeffrey Hinton. Do you know this guy? He's seen as a godfather of AI. The New Yorker did a profile of him recently. He lives on a secluded island

that you get to from a ferry off the coast. Like literally like he modeled his life off a falcon, you know? Like I love the idea of the tech guy who's seen the scary future and then has just kind of decided to retreat to like his island compound. That's actually something just like the Silicon Valley guy still exists. That still exists. Right. Except they're in New Zealand now. Yeah.

One other thing that really kind of got me is the first big scare at NORAD. They think the Soviet MIRVs are over Nevada. They have just separated, headed for Las Vegas. Reaction is a little muted, I feel, in that room. What you got up here, Joe?

Sir, we have radar tracking. Eight inbound Soviet ICBMs. Already over the pole. Estimated impact 11 minutes. Confirmed target area area western United States. Why didn't we get a launch detection? I'm not sure, sir. We're checking for DSP malfunction. Everybody seems remarkably chill about it.

Well, it hadn't gone through, I think, you know, modern day Las Vegas. That's right. It hadn't had its revival yet. It was still the days of the golden nugget. It was like Wayne Newton days. Right, right. But kind of the mob had come out. It didn't have that cool chic to it anymore. Yeah, I mean, Frank wasn't there anymore. So, like, what's even the point nugget. It was like Wayne Newton days. Right, right. But the kind of the mob had come out. So it didn't have

that cool chic to it anymore. I mean, Frank wasn't there anymore. So like, what's even the point? Yeah. Okay. Moment that you most related to personally. I will say

when Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy are hunched around the computer getting absolutely hyped on soda, talking so fast at each other. That felt very familiar to me. We're missing an AOL dial-up,

but otherwise we're very close to my childhood. I'd say for me, a couple things. Like one, there's, I was, one of my things was like that teenage excitement in computer games. But another is just like Broderick's like, he's no idea what to do with Alex Sheedy. You know, like my teenage,

it reminded me of what it's like to be a teenage boy who has no idea, has all these different feelings that they have when like a girl like Alex Sheedy is around them and has no idea what to do. And so, therefore, is simultaneously doing everything wrong and right because he's kind of being himself, even if that's like a clumsy nerd. But he's trying to. The thing I loved is to just call back something from like pay phones. Oh, yeah. You know, like having to hit the pay phone like repeatedly like i like i miss when pay phone is something that actually mattered you

know and he and they do phone freaking which is a big thing that steve jobs and steve wozniak did where they would like plug this little box in so they could get free calls i would say it is the fact that matthew broderick and ali sheedy are children who think they're adults. Yeah. And they are just kids. And they're walking around thinking they're mature. Look at us. We can change our grades. We can have this, you know, we're beginning our adult lives.

The future is all ahead of us. And they actually then face that when they're, I think they're talking about the end of the world. I can't remember where they were, but they're talking about how, what they, all the things they wanted to do. Yeah. Like he doesn't know how to swim or something. and they're, I think they're talking about the end of the world. I can't remember where they were, but they're talking about how, what they all the things they, right, all the things they wanted to do. Yeah. And.

Like he doesn't know how to swim or something. Yes, yes, yes. And then that's the final moment that, no, we were kids. We were stupid fucking kids. Right. The realization that it's very real comes well after they've actually seen

the evidence that it's real. Yeah. I will add David's mom as a realtor, I have definitely had this realtor before. Oh yeah add, David's mom, as a realtor, I have definitely had this realtor before. Oh, yeah. When she's saying, get an adjustable rate.

Get the jacuzzi in the bedroom. Yeah, yeah. That's, I feel this lady 100% did mortgage fraud in the 2000s. I was a little surprised

that the parents were like, now he changes his grades, but like, there's still like season, like the parents are like thrilled that he just didn't fail. like, there's still like C's and like the parents are like thrilled that he just didn't fail. Why didn't he change them

to be a little bit better? Why didn't he change them? He's strategic. He's thinking about what are they going to, if it's A's, they're going to know. But if I'm the parents

and he's like a genius, right? He's up there like hacking into stuff and they're like, oh, it's great. You got a D on math. Yeah, I always, I actually remember that

at the time being like, like, because it actually, I had trouble understanding it, which is like, like, wait, are you smart? Are you dumb? Yeah. What are we doing here? I actually thought that was perfect as the portrayal of like the kid who and again, this is something that I related to, who would like spend a lot of time in the computer when the computers were still coming out is that this was if you were kind of the smart kid who was a little bit of a misfit who was a little bit of a fuck up in class who you know could do well riffing on the test without studying but like didn't know how to good good get good grades because i'm just talking about myself now like wouldn't do the homework okay his his his hit on the teacher is like savage though right it's a little much like you can you can reproduce without sex like it was like it's he's this nerdy guy except he's willing to kind of come out and just It's a little much. You can reproduce without sex.

He's this nerdy guy, except he's willing to come out and just clobber. Do a Rodney Dangerfield. This is something that I have actually noticed when you go back and watch movies from the 70s and the 80s, because I think there's this idea that like, oh, those were classic films and there were things you couldn't say back then

that you can say now or that the movies have gotten woke. And it is actually the opposite. When you go like you could not get away with making cops like the cops in serpico you could not get away with making the generals like the generals in war games you could not get away with making the teachers like the teachers in ferris bueller in this movie there's a way in which like the even movies that have like a progressive point of view, they like have,

they have like kind of a conservative shield, like a defense mechanism, which requires like the, the generals to not be kind of, they can be evil, but they can't be kind of like, uh, bloviating dummies in the same way.

Or, and the cops, they can make mistakes, but they can't be corrupt in the same way. Or if there are, if they are corrupt, they have to be the villain, right? Like in Serpico, all the cops are just corrupt and they can make mistakes, but they can't be corrupt in the same way. Or if they are corrupt, they have to be the villain, right? Like in Serpico, all the cops are just corrupt.

And they're worse than better cops. But there's no real, there's not like, oh, you know, the twist in a lot of movies now is that the cop is a bad guy. But you could actually admit that these were human beings in the the past that you can't do that now i feel it's a great in that sense it's a great contrast with the nuclear scare movies of the 60s like dr strange love and fail safe where there are evil characters where they're like our generals or nuclear strategists who are like this is a bad person who's deliberately pushing the world in a bad direction but all of the characters in war games are like fundamentally well-meaning and like trying to pull things in a good direction and it's just like a little oopsie doodle they have where they have a like procedural disagreement about whether the machine should be in charge of the nukes egotist it's sort of like more more sort of normal flaws

it's not like they return a couple years later another classic 80s movie spies like us where where there's the evil general that makes them launch the nuclear weapon because he wants to have the war um you know similarly same, same anxieties about nukes, but that had the more archetypal... Because you're right, like, the general ultimately, you know, like, refuses to launch the nuclear missiles, right? And Dabney Coleman is horrified. You know, like, nobody wants the nuclear war in this movie.

Right, although you do have the kind of stock, like, sniveling politician in the room who is just worried about the poll numbers, which shows up in like every 80s movie. Yeah. And today, too. That's true. And maybe also in real life. Okay, most unintentionally revealing moment. I was really struck that when they're pulling up the list of games, one of them is Global Thumar Nuclear War. And Matthew Broderick is absolutely shocked and appalled at this. And this today would be the mildest computer game you could possibly imagine.

Yes. It is funny that it's also like, you don't really work your way up to global thermonuclear war. If I remember, it's like there's chess, there's checkers, there's biochemical warfare. That's more local. It goes like checkers, chess, chemicals over Europe, and then global thermonuclear war. And it's like, what kind of list of games is this because even then that would have been strange it would be like what should we play

should we play Oregon Trail or Biotoxic Warfare yeah and his his like reaction to it is like oh these must be

the new games from like you know Atari or something and then he goes to the nerds and they're like that guy's like seems military

you think I have to tell you 16 year old me would have loved to play Biotoxic Warfare over Europe. I think that would be so cool. I also thought it was really interesting and kind of striking that there's this assumption that the rogue AI could simultaneously threaten the destruction of the world. But there was also this assumption that it would arrive at the fundamentally wise and benevolent answer. I thought it was just like a really telling moment about how people were

thinking about technology in the eighties. Yeah. I mean, I think it's that they weren't thinking about it, but you know, it's a sort of like, it's a person in there. There's a person in the box.

Yeah. That's really, as far as it goes. Yeah. It is definitely, I feel it's definitely not how we think about these programs now. And I think we see them as, I honestly think because of our exposure to social media and our understanding that like our social media feed is driven by a little AI and a little computer program that is acting against our interests.

I feel that that is the thing that just because we all have experienced it has made us realize that these machines are not on our side and they're not necessarily benevolent. Well, like the other thing that's interesting to consider is what are we talking about? We're talking about you feed human behaviors, human language, human data into these machines. And this movie reflects that kind of human, you know, techno optimism that the machine will learn how to be a better human, right? Like that conclusion, oh, the only way to win is to not play the game, is the virtuous answer that one would get from looking at all the data. Now, I think what we've been forced to consider, by the way, that social media has destroyed all of our brains is like, what if the machines actually become the evil version of humans? You know, just because you become wise doesn't mean you become good, right?

And a lot of assumptions around technology have been that it will make us better when, in fact, why wouldn't technology bring connection between the natural language models and the cognition behind it, whether you could actually describe it as thinking or intelligence, what that actually means, whether you can know what it means. In this movie, the fact that the computer can talk back to you is seen as a stand-in for it has a kind of general intelligence that's not really explained. Then you say, well, what does it realize at the end of running the simulation over and over and over again? The only way to win is not to play. That is an extremely complicated idea.

That is very hard even to parse. A lot of assumptions go into getting there, which of course, that's what happens because it's a movie uh but the the fact that it is a the like the nature of its intelligence is not really doesn't isn't just isn't contemplated by the film so it's just a really it's a really inexperienced super smart person it's a child right it's a god child so it has to have that like kind of revelation that captures what we should have known all along but yeah in the end like what super smart person. It's a child, right? It's a godchild. So it has to have that kind of revelation

that captures what we should have known all along. But yeah, in the end, the only winning move is to pretend you're doing a simulation in which the computer is broken,

signal to the Russians that your systems are down, then use the subs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only winning move is to combine the biochemical warfare to make sure we do a series of targeted assassinations in the weeks leading up to the event to destabilize the Duma.

Begin the slow degradation of their economy to make sure that their weapon systems don't have the parts they need to be repaired in 50 or 60 years. We win. Yeah, it is. It is very funny how and I feel like we still do this when we're dealing with some rudimentary AI, even if it's a like, I don't know, we're talking about the like AI chatbots that are dating companions that are supposed to be like friends. We like kind of project them forward to be the most benevolent version of humanity. Yeah. Even after we've learned over and over again that that's not necessarily what they're going to become yeah look it's um we just keep doing it over and over again which is like i am sure we will look back in 40 years on whatever movies are made about this version of what we're calling artificial

intelligence and say wow look at all the things we hadn't contemplated look at all the ways in which we were silly about this because like we're walking around it's like we got like people making like oh yeah it's a it's a it's a large language model and it can it can do a bunch of stuff a person can do and then it's like okay no i see what you're saying what can a person do what's a person what is a mind what is consciousness what is intelligence oh we don't know the answer to any of these questions so you're just skipping it so the only way to win is to not play the game. Biggest real-world impact?

I mean, one is that Reagan watched this at Camp David. Next day, he brought it up at an NSC meeting, which led immediately to a bunch of reforms at the Pentagon because he was like,

hey, could this happen? And I guess the conclusion was, yeah, maybe, so we should do something about it. And it led to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to act late, two years later.

I swear, I think this movie is like like so reagan comes in you know he is like the the most hawkish right-wing anti-communist guy we've ever had this is the same year as abel archer yeah 81 he comes in you know it's it's all this kind of resurgent patriotism kind of that's xenophobic because of the iranian hostage crisis. We put the Pershing missiles in Europe. There's no nukes. He's like talking, trash talking, calling the Soviet Union an evil empire. But like at the same time that Reagan's getting freaked out by his briefings on nuclear war, there's this pop culture movement, right? With the day after, with this, people, suddenly there's like people getting freaked out that the Cold War is getting too hot again, right?

And, you know, it's two years later, it's 1985, that Gorbachev becomes general secretary. By 86, they're literally almost negotiated the destruction of all nuclear weapons. By 87, they have the INF Treaty. By 88, Reagan's going to Moscow and the Cold War's over. I'm not saying war games ended the Cold War. I'm saying and the Cold War's over. I'm not saying war games ended the Cold War. I'm saying...

I'm not saying that. It's on the table. I'm saying that there was this kind of pop culture tip from, like, the jingoistic, you know, version of things to the, like, let's, like, for the good of humanity, you know, get on top of these weapons and, you know,

figure things out. And I think this is kind of right at that hinge point where you could see that turn happening. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's wholesome and patriotic in a Reagan era way while having a message that is like, hey, let's not let the nuclear weapons kill us all. You know, I feel like you actually see a lot of that reflected a few years later when people are kind of looking back on the 80s and movies like The Hunt for Red October. Yeah yeah which is much more about this idea that like things are aimed in a really dangerous direction it got too hot yeah right it got too hot unless someone can come in and like really pull an emergency release lever yeah the the it's funny you see this shift to like so towards this becoming a kind of more abstract concept in like a movie like Crimson Tide.

In Crimson Tide, the plot of that movie is that there is some sort of rogue general or leader threatening nuclear war. This sub is there in case they're gonna threaten to launch their missiles. They get an alert that they can't verify that this enemy is fueling the missiles. And Gene Hackman wants to launch, Den. They get an alert that they can't verify that this enemy is fueling the missiles. And Gene Hackman

wants to launch. Denzel Washington doesn't. And it sets off a mutiny on the ship. Great movie. Great movie. However, the movie

is oddly objective in the ultimate goals of both men. When Gene Hackman would have caused an unnecessary global conflagration, Denzel Washington was correct to try to stop it. Sure. And at the end of the movie, it's like,

just two guys with two different points of view. Both love this country. Salute, let's move on. And they're pals. They came back together again. Unbelievable. Talk about the fucking horses. Well, I mean, that is kind of the personification of what the debate was.

And I guess in some subterranean ways remains. I mean, in the 60s, that was literally a debate. There was a very live. Have you guys read this book, The Wizards of Armageddon by Fred Kaplan? Oh, yeah, I did. Amazing book. And it's all about the development of nuclear strategy. All right.

That's the last time you're asking me if I've read a book today. That's it. You're done. You've hit your limit. Okay, but's the last time you're asking me if I've read a book today. That's it, you're done. You've hit your limit. Okay, but it's a great title, right? It is a great title. Anyway, this is a like, the debate that produced nuclear strategy as we know it in this country and globally

was over the debate in Crimson Tide and was like over the Gene Hackman's in the national security establishment and outside of it saying that we have to go first because someone is going to go first eventually. And it's better to go first than to wait for someone else to do it. And then Denzel Washington saying that cooler heads have to prevail even through each individual crisis. And that is how we ended up with the phrase mutually assured destruction, which was coined to mock that debate, but ended up as our official policy. Yeah. And you do see in all of these movies

a kind of fear of, but then a glorification of the power, a kind of like, almost like psychosexual appeal of the ability to destroy the world, like the opening crawl, which has the beeps with the font that you mentioned. It's at the opening of Crimson Tide

says the three most powerful people in the world, President of the United States, the leader of Russia, and the captain of a thermonuclear sub or whatever it says. And just the idea of like,

like look at that fucking big swinging dick on that ship. Like there's a kind of worship and fear of the power at the same time. Right. Well,

because there's, I mean, they're missiles. They're very foul. They are. Well, at the beginning of this movie, I mean, they're missiles. They're very fallible. They are. Well, at the beginning of this movie, I actually remember, too, when I would watch this as a kid,

like, there is something, you know, thrilling in a terrible way about seeing the silos opening and then this giant... Yeah, it is very phallic, right? Yeah. But it's, like, the power of that and the men going underground.

It's awesome. It's like a secret, cool world. Then the funny thing to me is that like I, you know, when I was in government, I would travel. I know, Lovett, if you remember, like there was in motorcades, there was one car that was always called Control,

which was like a black suburban. And if you traveled as the National Security Council rep, the NSC rep was the jargon for it, you sat in this car, like basically the whole motorcade. And so domestic travel, one person goes to the NSC just in case someone has to talk to the president about something. And so you sit in this car and you sit there with the military aide and he's got this suitcase in between you and him. And you would kind of like drive to some place. And I was smoking in those days, and so I'd go out, smoke, come back,

sit in the car, you know, making conversation with the guy, and there's literally the fucking nuclear codes in the suitcase between us, and it's very ordinary, you know? Like, it's not, you know, cool, I mean, yes, the missiles are underground, but, like, you start to realize that this whole nuclear apparatus, there are human beings

who are just normal human beings all through this chain of command. Like my job would have been if we got a call to like go grab Obama from reading, you know, my pet goat or whatever he's doing and be like, uh, there's nuclear weapons on the way. I'm with the guy with the suitcase. Like, what do we do? You know, like, wherever we were, you know, a campaign stop in, you know, middle of nowhere Ohio, right? And so, in actuality, the dramas wouldn't play out on subs. It'd basically be like the motorcade parked outside an event, you know,

like, with a clunky-looking suitcase with some computer in it, you know? Which is, it's all presidential it you know which is it's all presidential authority yeah and it's all human beings in the chain of command right right did you ever see inside the suitcase no because you don't like people always assume that you kind of tourist your way like hey can i see the codes you know like you you're there because you know not to ask those questions yeah yeah fair um i should ask i regret it regret it. Come on, you want to peek inside the suitcase. You do want to peek inside the suitcase. All right.

What would be different if this came out today? I love it. I'm with you. I think that this machine would realize launching the nukes is the wrong way to do this, and I think it would manipulate global wheat prices. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it would be just,

we'd just be a lot smarter about it. All of a sudden, it's like, wait a second, there's something going wrong with the international tin market. You look over, like, Bitcoin's gone up, gone up, but then Ethereum's gone dramatically down. Everybody's getting these weird AI phone calls telling them not to go home. Things get strange. Josh's wish would be so grand to be here.

I do think definitely instead of doing all of the backdoors and secret prompts that Matthew Broderick does, like guessing passwords to get in. He's just doing phishing emails. Yeah. That's what we know. Hacking now is you don't have to hack into the mainframe. You just send them a bunch of you send emails to old people or you just like links in them. Leave it.

Leave enough. Leave enough bad thumb drives around. Right. Somebody's going to shove that into your computer. You're fucked. Right. Right. And I also think the near miss would be North Korea, but we would be understood to, we would be meant to understand it as China.

There would be a wink wink that it's China, but they'd call it North Korea. Because we're not allowed to. Yeah, but they gotta be on Chinese screens. Yeah. Right, right. And then there would be, at some point there would be a PLL general who would come in to save the day. Yeah. Maybe only in the Chinese release.

Yeah. I don't know. There was a while when it was like Arrival, The Martian. For a while, every big movie had to have a PLA general who would show up at the end who was really stern, but really wise and would help guide things. But yeah, benevolent. Yeah, I miss that guy. Okay, we're going to finish off with a round of true or false. I'll read you a series of quotes or plot points of the movie and you tell me whether you think that is true or false. All right, true or false, missile launch officer Leo McGarry says this at the beginning of the movie. You want somebody on the goddamn phone before you kill 20 million people. I think that's true.

I'm going to say true. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And isn't Leo McGarry also the name of the chief of staff from the West Wing? That's what, it's the actor. Yeah, okay. Okay, I was like, that is the actor. Oh my God, that's That's what, it's the actor. Yeah, okay. Okay, I was like, I was like, that is the actor. Oh my God, that's what I mean.

It's that guy. Every, everybody in this movie is like, somebody like, oh, it's that guy. Yeah. And that scene

always throws me because the two launch officers are West Wing chief of staff Leo McGarry and Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs. It's not a combination

you expect to see together, but I like to think that those two characters actually did cross paths in real life and that was how, that was how Mr. Blonde went so crazy. Yeah, I'm going to see together. But I like to think that those two characters actually did cross paths in real life and that was how Mr. Blunt went so crazy. Yeah, I'm going to say true.

True or false, Matthew Broderick character says this, I don't believe any system is totally secure. True. True and incredibly prescient. I can't believe they knew

that in the 80s. True or false, from our boy McKittrick, the president will probably follow the computer war plan. Now, that's a fact. I'm not sure if that is a fact. I mean, it's Reagan, right?

I mean, you got to factor in the timing. That's true. Yeah, I would say true. I'm going to say false. Okay. True or false from General Berenger, I wouldn't trust this overgrown pile of microchips any further than I could throw it. True. I think that's true.

I don't think, I think even that's understates it now. I could throw a pile of microchips pretty far now. I could, I could get my phone like across a four lane, maybe not four lane, a two lane street if I needed to. And I don't trust it that much. True or false. If you get caught hacking into America's nuclear weapons command, the FBI will take you to NORAD and lock you up in a doctor's office.

I meant to bring that up. Why? You don't bring the... Let's bring him into the heart of NORAD. They don't take you to where the crime happened. They don't take you to the... Let's get these two kids closer to their crime. Let's say this super hacker

who might be linked to the Soviet Union somehow, let's put him inside the heart of the Nuclear Command in NORAD, in a doctor's office. And let's put him inside the heart of the nuclear command in Nora, in the doctor's office. And let's put him in the weirdest doctor's office ever, first of all, that he can hack out of in a very cool way with the phone and then walk out with a tour. The whole security protocols in Nora had really fucking got me. They're a little iffy. Listen, listen.

That's the lesson of this movie. Nora's got to lock it down. They've got a rogue computer that's on a launch of nuclear weapons. They got TORs coming through the place. They got teen hackers. The other thing I do, like when I first saw this movie, Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy were old.

They were older. And now they are children. I know, they're babies. They're little babies. Okay, speaking of the little babies, true or false, it's 1983. You are a 16-year-old kid able to access any computer network on Earth.

Ally Sheedy is in your bedroom, and the thing you do to impress her is change her grades and get a plane ticket to Paris. I feel like that's 10 out of 10. I honestly, I could not, I spent a long time trying to think of something better,

and I think they nailed it. Because he just didn't know what to do, so he did, you know. Those are cool moves. I don't know what to do, so he did, you know. Those are cool moves. I don't know what I would do on a computer now. Yeah, maybe now we just send some funny tweets. I do love how the Paris trip comes back to haunt him. That was a good little plot divide.

That was fun, yeah. Oh, the other thing in the doctor's office, when he pulls out the tape recorder, apparently people in NORAD are on PCP. Yeah, yeah. This is a lot going on in NORAD in this movie. Okay, true or false, you are a 16-year-old kid suddenly in charge of the Soviet nuclear Norad are on PCP? Yeah. This is a lot going on in Norad in this movie. Okay. True or false, you are a 16-year-old kid suddenly in charge of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Your first strike against the U.S. would be on Las Vegas. Again, I... I would say it's a good demonstration strike. You're demonstrating resolve, but you're leaving room for de-escalation. Yeah, you can negotiate. You can negotiate from there. Personally, if it were me, I would start with the 101 here in L.A. I feel just just cleansing fire. We're just going to start over.

Yeah, it's fine. Could you tell the difference? OK. True or false of all the nuclear war scenarios that flash on the screen as Joshua runs through the simulations. The one that I would like to hear the most about or the one that would be the coolest to hear about is Iceland Maximum. And we've also got Sudan Surprise, Chat Alert, Bavarian Diversity, and Chile Confrontation. I want to read a full book. I've had a few Chile Confrontations in my day.

I've tried some of them. None of them ended well either. By the way, I've lost my Confrontation with Chile 100% of the time. Never won that scenario. The only way to win the Chile 100% of the time. Never won that scenario. The only way to win the Chile game is Nacho Cue. It is a remarkable window into the degree to which any country that wasn't the U.S. and the USSR was kind of total chessboard. Why are they firing all these nukes at Argentina? What did Argentina fucking do?

All the Nazis. We're finishing all family business. One year after the Falklands War. That's true. Yeah, so we're retaking the Falklands. All right, last one. True or false is from an officer at NORAD. I just hope they don't make me eat

any of those damn fish eggs. I'm going to say false. The fish eggs are delicious. Yeah, is that about caviar? It's about when they think that the Soviets are launching and he's saying, boy, I hope you like vodka.

Yeah, no, it's a funny thing because it's like, how do you think this ends with you eating fucking caviar? Listen, if you're in the burnt out husk of America, now a colony of the Soviet Republic. There's no beluga, my friends.

I would say if they wanted to rebuild as part of their occupation and they brought some caviar in, I think that would help ease things. But wait, I just want to come back to this because the above ground headquarters of NORAD, where they're sitting, would literally be in any Soviet first strike scenario.

That's true. So the idea that a bunch of Russians are going to kick down the door and take over America and force them to eat caviar is pretty optimistic. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, unless they were on the tour.

But it is like, there's a weird window into how Americans looked at the Soviet Union. It was all these very stereotypical, you know, the Russians that sit around eating fish eggs. Yeah, not in the 80s. But all these movies like, you know, the Russians that sit around eating fish eggs. Yeah, not in the 80s.

But all these movies like, you know, Rocky IV, Drago, like the way we saw Russia was really weird. Cartoonish. Very cartoonish. Red Dawn. Yeah. I was watching Old Olympics and Nadia Komanich is about to do The Uneven Bars, I believe. Is that

what I'm thinking of? When is that from? I think it's 1984. Okay. And she's Romanian. Soviet bloc country. Yeah, I believe. Is that what I'm thinking of? When is that from? I think it's 1984. Okay. And she's Romanian. Soviet bloc country. Yeah, same thing. We saw it all the same. Yeah, so the American commentator says, here comes Nadia Comaneci from Romania. Obviously, there will be a bias in the scores

because not just the Russian judges there, but there are several other judges that are going to be worried about what the Russians might think. So the Russians have friends on this jury pool. The Russians have friends among these judges. And just realize that even in the Olympics, they don't do that at all anymore. The Olympics had this kind of Cold War flair to the judges. And I know for years, as a kid, I remember saying, oh, but you got to worry about those Russian judges. Yeah. The all-encompassing cultural infiltration of the Cold War is really...

I don't know. I really wish they made movies like this still. I really wish they made movies about geopolitics. Not just because I find it fascinating. I think it's helpful as a way for America and Americans to think these things through and to like kind of reckon with them culturally and collectively. I mean, a 90-minute movie with Matthew Broderick

and Alex Sheedy that's like very entertaining flies by and also like teaches you about nuclear doctrine and artificial intelligence. Like, we could use more of those.

I will say my usual plug, which is, I believe, the greatest movie about diplomacy ever made is Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country. Amazing movie.

An incredible film about enemies trying to make peace. The villain is a conspiracy of people trying to stop diplomacy. And the villain is played by... Oh my God, Shakespearean actor. Fuck, he does Shakespeare. His daughter comes back to play a Star Trek villain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plummer. Christopher Plummer. Christopher Plummer, who's an incredible, incredible voice. Christopher Lloyd is in it. Christopher Plummer doing Shakespeare as a fucking... But this beautiful villain who you come to sympathize with him and you understand his outrage and his point of view. I mean, it's very

end of the Cold War where Shatner is realizing he was kind of the bad guy. Yes. And the things that he did in order to quote unquote win were terrible. I'll never forgive them for the death of my son. Yes.

It's a great movie. I agree. Okay. Well, we're doing it on the Offline Movie Club somehow. We'll find a technology time. Okay, great.

All right. Well, pals, this was great. Thank you so much for coming on. What a blast. Yeah. Charlotte Landis. Audio support from Jordan Cantor and Kyle Sucklin. Kenny Siegel and Jordan Katz wrote our show's original theme music, thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Reid Cherlin for production support.