NORAD · WOPR · 1983

WarGames · WOPR

"Shall we play a game?" — the phrase that launched a thousand hacker careers. In WarGames (1983) a teenager accidentally connects to WOPR, a NORAD supercomputer, and unwittingly starts Global Thermonuclear War. President Reagan reportedly asked his Joint Chiefs after seeing the film: "could this actually happen?" — and got a serious answer. Here is a faithful recreation of the NORAD launch screen.

Press Esc to abort the launch (Joshua approves).

The film that changed everything

WarGames (John Badham, 1983) introduced the general public to concepts like war dialing, social engineering, and ARPAnet. Matthew Broderick as David Lightman used an IMSAI 8080 with 300 baud modem. The final line — "The only winning move is not to play" — became doctrine.

The Reagan effect

After Reagan saw the film in 1983, US intelligence agencies produced a classified report on computer vulnerabilities. The result was NSDD-145 (1984), the first US policy on computer security, and eventually the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1986) — the law under which US hackers are still prosecuted today.

NORAD · CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN COMPLEX · DEFCON 3 CLASSIFIED · TOP SECRET · SIOP-ESI
T-01:00
PRIMARY TARGETS
Moscow, USSRTARGETING
Leningrad, USSRTARGETING
Kiev, USSRTARGETING
Vladivostok, USSRTARGETING
Beijing, PRCTARGETING
LAUNCH ASSETS
ICBM Minuteman III:1000
SLBM Trident II:288
B-52 / B-1B airborne:72
Total warheads:5.244
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE
IS NOT TO PLAY.
— WOPR