From Simulations to Simulacra of War: Game Scenarios in Cyberwar Exercises

This article explores the underlying culture of war sustaining the setting of scenarios within cyberwar games. In particular, it engages with the question of how to simulate a phenomenon that, due to its remoteness, possesses an ambivalent relation to reality. Looking at scenarios of major national and international cyberwar games as illustrations, this article, first, engages with the modes of existence of simulated cyberwar through the conceptual prisms of copy/original and simulation/simulacra. It then explores how these scenarios frame cyberwar in relation to cyberwarfare scholarship and legislations. It then sheds light on how, through operational exercises, these scenarios ultimately reproduce cyberwar as an imagined cultural artifact.