The Coast Guard’s strategic gaming and planning efforts are making waves. Helmed by the Office of Emerging Policy and Strategic Foresight (DCO-X), Project Evergreen is the Coast Guard’s perennial strategic foresight program. It is chartered to highlight long-term risks and opportunities across many plausible futures over a rolling 20-year timeframe. DCO-X uses workshops (called “pinecones”) to both explore and communicate the impacts of these plausible futures to the Service. One innovative product from Project Evergreen is the Paratus Futurum strategic wargame, which is attracting interest from top reporters in the United States.
Military and government officials, as well as policy experts, use wargames to avoid unforeseen obstacles and plan for unexpected challenges. Games help leaders challenge assumptions and conventional wisdom; they are an essential part of the policy and strategic planning processes.
A reporter from National Public Radio (NPR) attended a Paratus Futurum game hosted by DCO-X in Portsmouth, Va. in April. “The military regularly conducts war games,” the report said, “sometimes with real ships and tanks, but also sometimes just a map around a table. Very recently, though, a new adversary has shown up in those games—climate change.”
The report painted a vivid picture of the game, which included two dozen Coast Guard members of various ranks. The participants “gathered around tables with poker chips, dice, and two giant maps.” The Rand Corporation’s Michelle Ziegler was one of the “game masters” tasked with planning and running the game. Rand envisioned a 2030 in which melting polar ice in the Arctic gave rise to “a new shipping route from China to Europe along the northern coast of Russia...Which is bringing more commerce in the area, more activity, also more potential for tensions.”
Game players also responded to increased storm activity leading to more potent typhoons and hurricanes. The game, NPR explained, helped prepare the Coast Guard for increasingly severe weather events—and the grave consequences for American citizens and even Coast Guard installations.
MyCG observed a subsequent game at Coast Guard Headquarters and spoke with Ziegler and fellow “game master” Emily Yoder to learn more about how the games are designed. Their process involves “a lot of internal testing of what are realistic and plausible situations,” Yoder told MyCG.
RAND’s design of Evergreen games reflects a multi-year partnership with the Coast Guard, building on previous research and lessons learned. Ultimately, RAND’s Evergreen team hopes their games will help Coast Guard members “look at the service from a new perspective” by forcing players to take a wider view beyond operational siloes. And their game is carefully crafted to teach players to hone their strategic thinking skills in a “safe-to-fail environment,” where they can take creative risks and adapt as necessary.
Evergreen is more than a series of wargames. It's a critical process that helps the Coast Guard forecast the future, expect the unexpected, avoid failures of imagination, and get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Evergreen’s research and wargames shape the future of the Coast Guard and its priorities.
DCO-X needs your help shaping the future. Now is your chance to be a part of the wargames that have been called “the gold standard” of government strategic planning. Spots are open in upcoming Evergreen workshops for members of the Coast Guard of all ranks.
To register your interest in Project Evergreen, please contact DCO-X. Be sure to explain in your message what you would bring to the table as an Evergreen participant.
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