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Wargames by Meridian

Wargames.

The methodological voice of Meridian. Where decisions get stress-tested before the crisis arrives.

Forthcoming · First Issues Mid-2026
About

The simulation
publication. For practitioners.

Wargames by Meridian is the publication channel for the simulation and exercise work emerging from the Wargames Lab. Where Foresight argues, Wargames demonstrates.

The publication is built around a single editorial premise: most institutional decisions are made under conditions the institution has never rehearsed. When the crisis arrives, the people who have to make decisions are improvising under pressure, with incomplete information, in roles they have never practiced. Wargames is the discipline of practicing the decisions before they have to be made — and Wargames by Meridian is the publication where the methodology, the exercises, and the lessons get written up.

The audience is policy planners, institutional decision-makers, military and civilian operations staff, public health emergency responders, humanitarian coordinators, and the researchers whose work depends on understanding how institutional decisions actually hold up when stress-tested. The voice is operational. The pieces will be longer than a Foresight essay, structured around scenario, methodology, and observed institutional response.

First issues are scheduled for mid-2026. Updates will be posted to the Foresight subscriber list before launch; a separate Wargames subscription channel will go live alongside the first issue.

What to Expect

Four kinds
of pieces — once we launch.

01 · Methodology
How we run a wargame
Pieces explaining the methodology Meridian uses to design and run exercises — how scenarios are built, how participants are selected, how decisions are scored, what the AI tooling does, what it doesn’t do, and how findings are validated.
02 · Exercise Reports
What we ran and what we learned
After-action reports from completed wargames, with the scenario, the participants’ decisions, the institutional response patterns observed, and the analytical findings. Identifying details redacted where required; methodology and lessons learned published openly.
03 · Walkthroughs
Decision sequences under pressure
Structured analyses of historical or hypothetical crisis sequences — the moment-by-moment decision tree, the information available at each point, the institutional pressures shaping the choice, and the alternative paths not taken.
04 · Open Problems
Questions the methodology can’t answer yet
Pieces on the methodological frontier — what wargaming as a discipline can and cannot do, where simulation breaks down, what kinds of institutional decisions we are still figuring out how to stress-test rigorously.
Related

In the meantime —
read about the Wargames Lab.

The publication is forthcoming, but the underlying research program is active. The Wargames Lab page describes the methodology, the active exercises, and the institutions Meridian is working with.

About the Wargames Lab  → Wargames Inquiries

Meridian is the independent research and applied-technology project of Mark Greenhalgh. Views, analysis, and materials published under the Meridian name are his own and do not represent the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or any U.S. government agency or component. Meridian operates independently of his official duties.