The Hacker and the Citizen-Soldier: When American Popular Culture Becomes the World’s Reality
By Alexander ColchiskiJune 1, 2022
Introduction
In the decades that followed World War II, the fear of a nuclear war and the spread of communism greatly influenced American popular culture. Postwar American domestic politics and relations with the Soviet Union climaxed following the 1980 presidential election. Conservative presidential candidate Ronald Reagan won by a landslide against the incumbent Jimmy Carter. After Reagan’s victory, tensions rose between the United States and the Soviet Union as a result of Reagan’s threatening anti-Soviet talk and saber-rattling rhetoric.[1] Because tensions between the two nations escalated so dangerously in the first three years of Reagan’s first term, “fears at home and among U.S. allies…created pressures for more conciliatory policies.”[2] Liberal Democrats, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, proposed “a mutual and verifiable freeze on the testing, production, and further deployment of nuclear warheads, missiles and other delivery systems.”[3] Conservative Republicans, for example, Senator Gordon Humphrey and President Reagan, believed that instead of freezing nuclear arms, the United States should increase the nuclear arsenal to maintain nuclear stability with the Soviet Union, and then both nations would eventually decrease the number of missiles on both sides. Liberals largely saw the Cold War as a political issue in which each side saw the role of the economy and government differently, whereas conservatives saw the conflict as “a metahistorical face-off between ‘the Free World’ and what President Reagan later referred to as the totalitarian ‘evil empire’ of the Soviet Union.”[4] The 1983 techno-thriller film WarGames and the 1984 war film Red Dawn neatly reflected this conflict between the liberals and conservatives.
After the 1980 election, liberal and conservative moviemakers used motion picture as a medium to influence public opinion on nuclear war and Soviet expansion, but it is unlikely that any of them foresaw the distant consequences of their films as they manifest today. The popular and staunchly conservative war film Red Dawn (1984) reflected the conservatives’ fear of Soviet military domination, impacted the political climate leading into the 1984 election season. The film argued an invasion by the Soviet Union, by way of nuclear and conventional warfare, could occur, a position that was divergent of liberal politicians and scholars. WarGames asserted nuclear war was unwinnable, helped to bring hacker culture to the mainstream, and embraced modernity and technological innovation as a means of human progress. The legacy of the these seemingly opposing films is demonstrated in the way in which they are remembered nearly four decades after their release. These two films found a way back to the popular consciousness as a twinned product in the effort to repel the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A comparative analysis of these two films will demonstrate a feedback loop of the way politics influence media and media influences politics. I will argue that each film both reflected and shaped the political climate of Reagan’s first term and the politics of nuclear war. After explaining the legacy of the films following the 1984 election and into the end of the Cold War, I contend that Red Dawn and WarGames found a new cultural significance in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, and the politics-media feedback loop that still exists which has brought the two opposed films together.
Post-1945 America saw a major shift of political ideologies, which had a profound impact on the 1980 presidential election. After the rise of the New Left in the 1960s, liberal ideology had shifted to solving issues such as civil rights. By the close of the 1970s, liberalism had become associated with issues of race, women’s reproductive rights, and affirmative action which offended “its former (white and European ethnic) constituencies and seemed to indicate that it was captive to the minorities and ‘special interests.’”[5] By the 1980 election, many Americans saw liberalism was seen as elitist and out of touch with the average person. Conservatives by contrast argued that sought to bring back values such as a strong family, religious rights, rugged individualism, and a strong national defense against the invasion of communism. The conservative movement encompassed “a coalition of anti-communists, traditionalists, libertarians,… neoconservatives, and a religious right based on certain shared values and on a common enemy, liberalism.”[6]
Liberalism and conservatism did not differ that greatly on foreign policy goals and objectives. For example, President Lyndon B. Johnson ignited a war in Vietnam to prevent the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, and while it was conservative, President Richard Nixon, that ended the war, each postwar president up until the end of the Cold War was engaged in some sort of anti-communist conflict. The label of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in regard to foreign policy did not necessarily denote if a person was hawkish or dovish.[7] Many liberals were considered hawks, believing war to be an adequate solution to keep the Soviets at bay, while some conservatives were considered doves, believing the best solution was through peaceful means such as arms deals. Carter was more of a dove in the that he believed in fighting human rights abuses, and Reagan skirted the line between both. Reagan, for all of this saber-rattling in front of television cameras, was privately terrified of nuclear war with the Soviets and longed for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.[8] Add concluding sentence about films and culture
WarGames
WarGames argued the liberal position, proposed by a number of scholars, activists, and politicians, that nuclear war was unwinnable, and increasing the United States nuclear arsenal would have proven to be more dangerous than freezing all nuclear development.[9] Although filmed and released before the Able Archer situation of November 1983, the film demonstrated how a false alarm could spiral the world into an accidental and unfortunate nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.[10] The film begins with a pair of military men who believe they are launching a nuclear attack on the Soviets. One man fails to turn his launch key after his partner cannot confirm with higher command that he is supposed to launch. The film then explains to the viewer that the duo was part of an exercise to ensure that missile commanders would launch when they received orders to do so. Because the men, as well as other missile commanders, failed to launch the missiles U.S. government officials, except for the commanding officer General Beringer, are convinced that an unbiased computer that has simulated a possible war with the Soviets countless times is the best option to ensure that the missiles will launch should the time come.
The computer, War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), is hacked by an unassuming computer hacker believing to be gaining access to unreleased video games. When the games’ options menu appears on his computer monitor, he decides to “play” “Global Thermonuclear War.” The innocent teenage hacker, David Lightman, is asked by the computer if he wishes to play as the Americans or the Russians. Lightman chooses the Russians. David playing as the Russians indicates two things: first, an innocent teenage rebellion where playing as the enemy in the Cold War is fun, and, second, that he was not afraid of America’s adversary. Both indications are politically left in that they challenge the authority of parents and patriotism of nation, both values of the conservative. David unknowingly takes control of WOPR through what he assumes to be a videogame. At the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) this presents as a surprise Soviet nuclear strike on the United States, which instigates the American authorities to raise the defense condition (DEFCON) level and prepare for nuclear war. Then, as David shuts down his home computer the simulation at NORAD shuts down leaving the American military authorities puzzled. At first glance it appears that the general who did not approve of WOPR maybe be correct in his assessment that replacing men behind the nuclear key may have been a mistake. However, as the film continues, we begin to understand that the computer is smarter than it first appears.
Similar to the 1983 made-for-television film, The Day After, WarGames presented the argument that nuclear war is one mistake that humanity could never recover from, and as long as humans controlled the outcome it would not solve the differences between the East and the West. In fact, WOPR’s creator makes the case that he could not program the machine to learn when to stop trying to win the game. The computer creator, Professor Falken, implies that humans will inevitably give in to the notion that the peace cannot be achieved, and that war must be fought. At the end of the film, David is allowed access to WOPR where he programs the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself where it discovers, after running a multitude of simulations, that there is no winning move in the game. David then uses this new realization to program WOPR to learn that “the only winning move is not to play.”[11] This reflected the belief of many liberals of the early 1980s who argued that nuclear war was unwinnable and because of that the best policy toward nuclear weapons was to freeze all development.
Location and space are an important aspect of cinematography. In WarGames, there are several important locations and spaces that could be considered. Two critical ones are David’s bedroom and the underground bunker. First, David’s bedroom harbors the technology where he is able to perform his cyber magic, including hacking into the school’s computer and changing his and Jennifer’s grades to prevent them from needing to attend summer school. The bedroom is also the location where David sparks WOPR to begin the simulations of nuclear war. Youth culture scholar Siân Lincoln argues that bedrooms are a physical place of refuge, “escapism, exploration, and experimentation.”[12]The bedroom in WarGames is the place where David can work in secrecy away from the watchful eyes of his parents and the rest of society. In one shot of the film, David and Jennifer are walking into his bedroom, and on his bedroom door there is a hand written sign that reads “This is a secure area / authorized entry only / no exceptions.”[13] This seemingly innocent handwritten sign at first glance is a fun play on the common signage that can be found at many government buildings and sites such as NORAD, but in a larger context it is much more important.[14] The sign is representative of the secrecy employed by government officials and hackers. Secrecy and David’s bedroom will be explored in greater detail when I explore the secrecy of hacker culture.
The second location under consideration is the NORAD command center, which is a frequent location featured in the flick. NORAD in real-life is a part of the larger Cheyenne Mountain Complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The complex was designed to survive a direct nuclear hit and was built to facilitate the command and control of all US nuclear deployment. NORAD is generally presented in popular culture as being one of the most technologically advanced locations in the world. WarGames is just one of many films to feature the complex. Other notable films that have featured the complex including Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Interstellar (2014).[15] The portrayal of NORAD in these two differs quite starkly. Dr. Strangelove, on the one hand, presents “bumbling leaders of the U.S. military-industrial complex huddled together beneath the Cheyenne Mountain as they try to avert the inevitable apocalypse.”[16] On the other hand, Interstellarexamines a world in which the military has been disbanded thus making NORAD useless to military operations, and it is turned instead into a science compound staffed by NASA officials.
WarGames portrays NORAD as both a place of science and innovation and a place of a bumbling general who does not believe in technological advancements, such as WOPR. When David arrives to NORAD in the movie, he is surprised and becomes excited by the technology that the military possesses stating, “Hey, look at that [referring to the series of complex computer stations]. That is some setup.”[17] WarGames, in the attempt to find a politically centrist or neutral location, uses NORAD as the anchor for which all politics could return to. This is because it is the one location where the conservative General Beringer and the liberal scientist Dr. Falken must be to shut down WOPR from launching nuclear missiles and save the day. As such, while WarGames offers the viewer the narrative of one general’s miscalculations and technology going haywire, in the end it reveals that the US government has agents who will prevent an accidental nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And it provides the audience with the comfort that humans have power over machines, which is a politically centrist position considering that some on both sides fear runaway technology.[18]
Writing and Production of WarGames
The four-year long process from script writing to the film’s release provides some context into the way WarGames went from a film “that had nothing to do with nuclear war or computers” to the techno-thriller it turned into.[19] In the early 1980s nuclear war was an issue of political ideology. Even so, the film performed well at the box office and beyond. Given a budget of twelve million dollars, the film made a healthy profit of eighty million dollars, and it was the “fifth highest grossing movie of 1983.”[20] This demonstrates that there was an audience for such a story about nuclear war and hacker culture. The film even reached the eyes of President Reagan who reportedly asked his Chiefs of Staff if they knew it was possible for a teenager to break into the government computer systems and accidentally trigger a nuclear exchange.[21] The Joint Chiefs had to reassure the president that was not possible, but the film had such a realistic feel to it that it shocked the president. This is an example of what a techno-thriller is supposed to do. A science fiction story wants a person to examine “moral dilemmas, human hubris, and hidden agendas.” A techno-thriller, however, wants a person to think what appears to be science fiction is plausible, if not already true.[22]WarGames succeeded greatly at this with the way that it portrayed the use of home computers and military technology. The movie captivated an audience that had never seen teenagers as a group that could hack into computer systems.
The film, written by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, was originally to be a film titled The Genius about a misunderstood scientist only capable of passing his knowledge to bright young teenager, but the script would quickly take a different direction. After the writers consulted futurist Peter Schwartz, they realized that “there was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known as hackers.”[23]Parkes and Lasker got the inspiration for David, the film’s main protagonist played by Matthew Broderick, from Schwartz and the young hackers who were playing computer games that “were blow-up-the-world games…things like Global Thermonuclear War.”[24] The script’s shift toward a conversation about nuclear weapons, war, and technology is an indication of the politics of the writers. The pair was not afraid to take the position that nuclear war was unwinnable, a clearly liberal position. If politics influences media and media influences politics, then it is no surprise that Lasker and Parkes consulted a futurist during the research process of the script to determine the direction for their story. Furthermore, to present computer hacking as just a teenage rebellion and not a serious illegal act indicates that the duo was not looking to vilify people who were associated with movements such as the New Left. In fact, WarGames reached an “adult audience because in effect David is an archetypal 60s kid. He’s rebellious. He’s in trouble with the authorities. And his rebellion and his persistence in rebellion leads to a positive change.”[25] This is example of how the writers’ politics influenced the creation of their script. WarGames captured a young audience by way of showing the newest and interesting technology, but was in conversation with the adult world over the consequences of war.
Red Dawn
Red Dawn was another film that captured a young audience and had a conversation with the adult world, but it took a much darker and more conservative turn. This movie depicts a world in which diplomacy has failed and the Cold War turned hot. Sandwiched between war films about World War II and Vietnam, Red Dawn was one of the few films that depicted the United States and Soviet Union going to war with conventional forces. In 1984, the film diverged from War Games in substantial ways.
Conservatives believed in matching Soviet nuclear capabilities which meant more development and upgrading of the United States’ nuclear arsenal. President Reagan and Senator Gordan Humphrey of New Hampshire feared that by not upgrading and increasing the nuclear arsenal and military strength the United States would lose its retaliatory nuclear response in the event of a Soviet strike or military expansion into NATO territory. In a word, the United States would lose in the fight to maintain deterrence as a foreign policy objective, which was a popular notion of the right.[26]The 1984 film Red Dawn argues for a similar stance, albeit inadvertently. Red Dawn is a film about a communist bloc invasion of the United States which mirrored the fears of President Reagan and Senator Gordan Humphrey, among others.
The film opens by introducing the audience to recent fictional events which have led to the invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union. In this setting, the audience is to imagine a world in which Soviet military might is superior to that of the United States. The opening credits portray a fictional world in which the Soviet Union suffers a devastating wheat harvest which escalates to mass protests in Poland. West Germany then demands that American nuclear missiles be removed from Europe. While Cuba and Nicaragua conscript 500,000 troops. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been dissolved and the United States stands on its own against its enemies.[27] The Soviet Union, with the help of its Latin American allies, takes the opportunity to invade the United States with airborne troops and aircraft. This opening dialogue of the film speaks to the fears of the conservatives regarding Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba, and to the continued American military operations and destabilization of South America.
Location, real or fictitious, is an important component in the narrative of Red Dawn. The film portrays real-life U.S. allies, such as NATO, turning their backs on the United States, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to a communist bloc invasion. In response to the initiated invasion, the American characters of the film fight back to secure the United States and its freedom. This speaks to the conservative approach that alliances were unnecessary for the United States to survive an attack from the East. Alliances, while important to maintain the global dominance and maintenance of peace, are predicated on cooperation and negations between countries, a system that is maligned with the conservative idea of the heavily armed and rugged, individualistic American. By opening the film with a scenario involving real global entities, the writer sets the viewer into an anti-Soviet mindset from the beginning and quickly defines the Us and Them.
The film continues with a pair of brothers who, after the town high school is gunned down by invading soldiers, take a group of boys to the mountains to survive. After a brief exchange between American helicopters and Soviet tanks, the boys escape in a pick-up truck filled with survival gear and crude weaponry to a campsite in the Colorado mountains to wait out the initial invasion in hopes the American military will arrive and save the day. After some time, the band realizes they cannot survive on the limited supplies they brought with them and that returning to town was necessary in order to get more supplies and assess the damage of the invasion. When they first re-enter the town, they find the Soviet forces have put the entire town under surveillance and have created re-education camps for the people that do not cooperate with their objectives. The band of boys are able to survive in the mountains because they have devolved back to the days of living off the land and hunting deer. The contrast between the rag-tag band of citizen-soldiers and their Soviet enemies is clear in the weaponry that is used by both. The band of boys were depicted with “American mythology and folklore” acting like “frontier woodsmen or cowboys” as they used revolvers, bolt-action rifles, and bows and arrows.[28] In contrast, the Soviet military used sophisticated weaponry such as tanks, helicopters, and automatic rifles. After one of the boys witnesses the mass execution of their parents, the boys decide to become a guerrilla force to fight the invaders and drive them out of the town. Never do the characters openly express their political beliefs, but it is obvious that the film creators placed the location of the film in rural Colorado where the voting bloc is predominately right-leaning. The intentionality of the film is to spark the imagination that rural, or ‘real,’ America would fight back against a Soviet invasion while the cities would fall because the citizens of modern cities are generally not armed as they are in the country.
The conservative argument that nuclear war was survivable, and possibly winnable, is in the background of the film without the audience realizing it. The first half of the film depicts the band of teenagers surviving in the mountains with no mention of the deployment of nuclear weapons. Then midway through the movie a downed American pilot, rescued by the teenagers, explains how and why the invasion occurred. This is a major plot point in the motion picture. The pilot explains that after NATO had broken apart, Latin American communist nations were secretly crossing the U.S. Mexico border to prepare for the Soviet invasion. This likely plays on the xenophobic rhetoric from conservatives about undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. In any event, the pilot continues on to describe how the Soviets destroyed several American cities and U.S. nuclear missile sites with nuclear weapons. After the initial invasion, American forces were able to keep the Soviets from invading any further and stabilize the lines between “free America” and “occupied America.” The pilot concludes by explaining that the Soviets wanted the United States in one piece which led to them no longer using nuclear weapons and relying on ground troops to take the country. This is a clear example of the conservative argument that nuclear war could be winnable. Red Dawn argues, however, that it would have been Moscow that would win in a nuclear attack because it had “perfected its own missile defense program, and in so doing had rendered the US nuclear arsenal worthless.”[29] In other words, Red Dawn was simultaneously arguing two points of conservative thought regarding the nuclear war politics: nuclear war was survivable and, possibly, winnable, and the U.S. must enhance its nuclear capabilities. Reagan believed that the U.S. should increase its nuclear capabilities to match the Soviets, and if the U.S. failed to do so a war similar to Red Dawn could be possible.
As with WarGames, location and space are also important in the analysis of Red Dawn. As historian Henry Kamerling has argued, the city is “powerfully tied to the idea of the modern” and in conservative films, the destruction of a city is a representation of the ineptness of modernity and science.[30] This could explain why a large city is never shown on screen, and why the film explains that it was the cities that got hit and destroyed with nuclear weapons while the small towns were spared from nuclear annihilation. Some of the film takes place in the kids’ small town, but the majority of the scenes in Red Dawn are of the band of kids in the Colorado mountains trying to survive. The countryside is a place of solace and safety to the conservative worldview. While cities are generally seen as a place of degradation to the human spirit.[31] The wide-open spaces of the country bring comfort to the person looking to survive because more can be seen and it is easier to hide from danger and return to an imaginary past. The difference between the urban and rural in a real-life setting will be explored further when looking at the invasion of Ukraine.
Writing and Production of Red Dawn
The writing and production of Red Dawn provides some insight into how the film that was set to be a story of a band of young boys surviving a war morphed into to the conservative and violent piece it became. The original story, titled Ten Soldiers, was written by Kevin Reynolds who would go on to direct the 1988 anti-war film The Beast of Warand Waterworld (1995).[32] Reynolds reported to podcaster Alex Ferrari from Indie Film Hustle that Red Dawn was not intended to be so political, but it indeed took a political turn once director and screenplay writer John Milius took over the production. Reynolds said he “just wanted to show…what war does to people” and that “this is what it would do to you if it happened here.”[33] In another example of how politics influences media, John Milius was a young and conservative director who was “renowned for this fascination with weaponry and his advocacy of right-wing causes.”[34] This explains the scripts’ sharp turn to the right. Milius was encouraged by the conservative rhetoric from the right, and believed it to be his responsibility to return to the staunchly anti-communist moviemaking.[35] Milius found a friend Buzz Feitshans, a fellow conservative and Red Dawn’s producer. The two of them had co-produced the film Uncommon Valor, another conservative flick, prior to Red Dawn, in 1983.[36]
The most significant addition to Red Dawn’s production team was when General Alexander Haig was hired by MGM/UA to the board of directors.[37] Haig had worked for President Nixon as Chief of Staff and later as Reagan’s first Secretary of State, but was “eased out of the State Department in June 1982, mainly because of his opposition to nuclear talks with the Soviets” (my emphasis).[38] Haig was a hard-liner against the Soviets and believed that United States would be in grave danger if the US government was diplomatic with them. Haig had no prior experience in filmmaking but brought with him the experience of military leadership and national defense. His experience would be useful in helping the young Milius to depict how an invasion of the United States could be possible. Haig, being Reagan’s first Secretary of State, was likely briefed on how the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, which was similar to the way they invaded the United States in the movie. Haig took Milius under his wing and the two went to the conservative think-tanks such as the Hudson Institute to evolve the story to include more belligerents in the invasion. This explains how Ten Soldiers morphed into “one of two Hollywood films throughout the Cold War…that depicted World War Three in terms of a direct military invasion of the United States.”[39]
Red Dawn is often described as a movie that depicts World War Three, but this is Americentric and problematic. The film intentionally informs the audience that Europe decided not to help the United States, and other parts of the world have decided not to get themselves involved either. Most of Asia, with the exception of China which was decimated by the Soviets, did not fight for either side, and Africa is not even mentioned in the film’s opening dialogue. To tag the film as a movie about World War Three gives the impression that there were a number of belligerents. This is not the case, however. The film depicts an invasion by Moscow and a few Latin American allies. As such, the tagline in and of itself is a testament to the way in which the film creators and a multitude of other people see the United States and its place in the world: if the United States is at war, then it must be a world war. Notwithstanding, the legacies of Red Dawn, a dark and violent film, and WarGames, a techno-thriller, provides evidence to the idea of a politics-media feedback loop, which thus far has only examined how politics influence media.
The Impact of Both Films
Red Dawn had a great impact on the popular imagination of the Cold War, especially in 1984 when tensions were high and both sides were debating what to do with nuclear weapons. Film historian Tony Shaw argues that Red Dawn successfully influenced teenagers who saw themselves with the rag-tag band of citizen-soldiers. Shaw quotes one teen as saying, “You come out hating the Russians.”[40] Here media influences politics continuing the media-politics feedback loop. Shaw further describes that some in the audience expressed Americans must awake from slumber and realize that the freedom they enjoy is not free, but is paid for with the blood of patriots, a common imagination among members of the right-wing. The most politically charged statement came from a political science major attending UCLA who claimed that Red Dawn would become a reality if Reagan lost the 1984 election. The film was enormously well received by conservatives groups around the United States. For example, John Milius was honored by The Gun Owners of America for creating Red Dawn and demonstrating why the Second Amendment, often associated with the right-wing, was so important for the early 1980s.[41] One last point that is noteworthy, Haig and Reagan “used the film as a tool to disparage the Democrat’s stance on foreign policy.”[42]
WarGames may have reflected the liberal position that a nuclear freeze was the best course of action to prevent a nuclear war with the Soviets, but its legacy far surpassed any debate on nuclear development or war fighting. The motion picture had a great impact in shaping U.S. policy on digital security and safety, and on the emerging hacker culture of the early 1980s and beyond. According to cultural studies scholar Stephanie Schulte, WarGames received so much attention that it reached the halls of congress where subcommittee hearings were held to understand computer and internet security. Schulte states that excerpts of the film were shown “at the opening of the hearings” and the “hearings ultimately resulted in the nation’s first comprehensive legislations regarding the internet and the first ever federal legislation on computer crime.[43] WarGames portrayed that computer hacking could be a serious national security threat, especially at a time when tensions in the Cold War were so high. Interestingly, as Schulte argues, WarGames joined the internet, a product of modernity and scientific achievement, and the “antiestablishment youth culture,” a product of the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.
Hacker Culture and Digital Security
The terms “hacker” and “hacker culture,” and the common representation of them in popular culture, are complex and are difficult to completely unpack in a section of an essay.[44] It is nonetheless critical to examine the highlights of hackers and hacker culture to understand the impact of WarGames in 1980s and beyond. WarGamesbrought hacker culture to the mainstream by way of David Lightman, the protagonist. As such, this film defined hacker culture as “an innocent rebellion” and hackers could be drafted to fight the Soviet Union in more peaceful means.[45]Additionally, due to the film’s portrayal of an innocent teenaged computer hacker it inadvertently “acquired cult status among American youngsters.”[46] This is because many young Americans could see themselves in David’s position as personal computers were becoming more mainstream. Prior to the release, the term ‘hacker’ simply meant someone that was skilled at working with computers and hardware. Meanwhile a person who broke into cyber places they were not supposed to be was called a ‘cracker.’[47] But after the film was released, popular culture took the term ‘hacker’ and used it to describe all computer “geeks”. These young hackers, such as David, were some of the first people to have access to computers that were outside of university computer labs. Home computers were new in 1983 that Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, David and Jennifer in the film respectively, reported that they had never seen or used a home computer prior to the shooting of the movie.
Hacker culture would change drastically after the release of WarGames. Douglas Thomas argues that WarGames “had a greater impact on hacker culture than any other single media representation.”[48] Thomas tells the tale of two hackers who both confessed that the film “really did play a part in imbedding the idea of computer hacking” in their minds and were heavily influenced by the techno-thriller.[49] Once the hype of hacking into a school computer, as David did, subsided, the representation of hackers took a turn from the lighthearted teenage boy being nefarious and playful with technology to a person who could cause serious problems for the expanding internet. Thomas reports that in 1988, Robert Morris launched what came to be called ‘Internet worm,’ “a computer program that transmitted itself throughout the Internet, eating up an increasing number of computing cycles as it continually reproduced itself.”[50]The purpose of Morris’ worm was to go unnoticed on computers connected to the internet and exploit security systems, “discover user passwords, and mail those passwords back to Morris.”[51] The worm expanded after Morris made an error in creating it. Morris did not intend for the worm to be so destructive, and it was supposed to be just another prank by a whiz with a computer. The mess that Morris created assisted in the already increasing worry about new technologies and their implementation. The line between the funny teenage prankster and the criminal became much more blurred.
Secrecy is one popular imagination of hackers and hacker culture. Several films released after WarGamesexemplify hackers’ secrecy. Films such as Hackers (1995) and The Net (1995) showed hackers working in the shadows of society. The Net features Angela Bennet (Sandra Bullock) as a computer analyst who gets caught in a conspiracy. She works from her home high-tech computer set-up similar to David’s, and “accidentally assesses and copies secret governmental files that reveal wrongdoing on the part of governmental official.”[52] This film is an example of hacking and secrecy playing off each other. On David’s door there was a sign that read “this is a secure area” which directly calls for secrecy of his cyber actions. Today, the most famous (or infamous, depending who is looking at it) hacking organization that exists is Anonymous, a decentralized crowd that has waged several cyberattacks on a wide range of different groups including the Church of Scientology and governments from around the world. The name “Anonymous” itself is evidence of the secrecy that shrouds modern hacker culture. Gregg Housh is one of the identified founders of the hacking group, but other members of the group rarely know who each other are. This makes Anonymous especially difficult to locate and to prosecute for crimes.
Originally formed on the website 4chan, users who were not identified on the site but commented on something were labelled as “anonymous.” The group would pull pranks on chat rooms and “other online communities to cause disruptions.”[53] As time passed, the organization began to rally around social and political causes. One of their first attacks was on the aforementioned Church of Scientology to reveal the inner workings of the Church and its supposed censorship. As time passed, the group became more mainstream and gained recognition among the public. Anonymous has social media accounts where it publishes its activity and its manifestos. The group is described by many as a “hacktivist” organization, a word meaning a hacker activist who uses hacking as a means of advancing social and economic justice. Not everyone is convinced of such nobility. In 2012, “the National Security Agency deemed Anonymous a threat to national security.”[54] There is no doubt, though, that the group has fought an online battle against Russia in the days and weeks following the invasion of Ukraine, which will be explored in greater detail momentarily. The innocent rebellion of David changing his grades transformed into hackers waging cyberwar on one of the most powerful nations.
The Popularity of Red Dawn
Once the Cold War ended in 1991, Red Dawn instantly became an antiquated story. That does not mean, however, that the movie was not consumed by people who found the film enjoyable outside of the Cold War context. It is difficult to know how popular the film was in the 1990s because there is not a lot of accessible information regarding the movie and its popularity. Yet, after 1999, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has tracked and recorded usage on the site, and it has a feature that presents the data in an easy-to-use chart called a MOVIEmeter.[55] The MOVIEmeter for Red Dawn provides clear evidence for the continuing popularity (on IMDb at least) over the last twenty-two years (see Appendix A, Figure 1). An interesting ebb and flow of popularity of the film appears to correlate to world events. For example, the popularity spiked between October 7, 2001, and January 27, 2002, perhaps the cause of this spike was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The popularity sharply drops but dramatically increases again in September 2002 until December of the same year where is drops once again. This could be because of one year anniversary of the terrorist attacks and the United States preparing for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The popularity calmed with minor spikes until the election season of 2012 when President Obama ran against Republican Mitt Romney. This also corresponds to when the 2012 remake of Red Dawn was released.[56] After the hype of the film and the 2012 election season, the popularity of the film dropped back down to the film’s normal levels with a minor bump at the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016. Overall, the film had its time of popularity when certain world events reminded people of a ‘last stand’ kind of story. Popularity has once again spiked because of the war in Ukraine and the similarities between the film and real-life being recognized.
When Two Become One
The two films in the early 1980s were quite opposite in most respects. It appeared that these films would go down in cinematic history as just two movies that reflected the time in which they were made and the politics of their creators. What has made these two films worthy of study is the extent to which they both transcend time. WarGamesused nuclear war as a catalyst to be relevant to the early 1980s and the fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The larger story was one of a bright teenage hacker which connected him with a teacher and pioneer in technology. In a post-production interview, the writers make it clear that the story is about two characters and the way in which they connect, David and Professor Falken. The purpose of using nuclear war as a catalyst to tell the story is that David was supposed to get into enough trouble that it would ignite a relationship between the two characters.[57] In the film, Professor Falken lives on a private island and is cut off from the outside world. Without a dramatic situation, such as imminent nuclear war, the two may never have met. Thus, WarGames is less about the politics of nuclear war and more about hacker culture and pioneers in technological innovations. This concept is perhaps more relevant in more recent times because of the expansion of personal computers, cellular telephones, tablets, and the wide reaches of the Internet.
Red Dawn, on the other hand, transcends time because the basic premise of the film is a rag-tag band of citizen soldiers defending their homeland and repelling an invading force. The film portrays Moscow invading the United States, and just thirty-eight years later Moscow invades Ukraine. The similarities are stark and will be addressed momentarily. Red Dawn may have heavy handedly argued conservative values of the early 1980s such as rugged individualism and national pride while simultaneously arguing that nuclear war could be won, again the Soviets effectively used nuclear weapons before launching a land invasion.[58] The idea that young men would fight and defend their home, however, is a common story throughout history. Stories such as the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC or the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 AD or the Battle of Wizna in 1939 are examples of a smaller fighting force making a last stand against impossible odds. Red Dawn offers the audience a story of Americans making a last stand. Similarly, today Ukrainians are making a last stand against an invading force. Red Dawn is a great example, perhaps more so than WarGames, in cementing the idea of the politics-media feedback loop. In the process of creation, politics greatly influenced the way in which the film was made. Then in 2022, war-time politics influenced media and the film resurfaced. Once Americans saw the similarities of Ukraine and the images of Red Dawn, media influenced politics (formal and personal) once again.
The two films become twinned when we examine the way in which their basic premises are being deployed in the war in Ukraine. Ukraine and its people are the smaller force of a rag-tag band of citizen soldiers making a last stand to defend their homeland. Meanwhile, all over the world hackers are employing their skills to disrupt Moscow’s digital capabilities in an effort to stop Moscow from succeeding in its plan to take over Ukraine.
War Games and the Role of Anonymous in Ukraine
It has so far been established that WarGames had a hand in shaping hacker culture resulting in the formation of Anonymous, who has an impact in the war in Ukraine. In March 2022, British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reported that Anonymous had declared “cyber war” on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Anonymous did this as a retaliatory response to Putin’s declaration of a “special military operation.”[59] According to the BBC, Anonymous hacked into Russian state television with the intention of broadcasting what the group considers to be the “truth” about the war in Ukraine.[60] The BBC referred a video that was shared on the Anonymous Twitter page, @YourAnonTV. The video shows a person’s television screen and the person cycles through television channels which appears to be videos and photographs of the devastation in Ukraine. The Twitter post reads as, “JUST IN: #Russian state TV channels have been hacked by #Anonymous to broadcast the truth about what happens in #Ukraine.”[61] The tweet was created on February 26, 2022, two days after the invasion began. The BBC clarifies that while it might have been Anonymous that hacked the Russian state television, the attack was only successful for 12 minutes. Anonymous has “also defaced Russian websites” which means the group gained control of the website. One website that was defaced included the Anonymous logo, a photo of a men’s suit jacket with a tie and a question mark instead of a head.[62]
Other hacker groups have jumped into the cyberwar against the Russian government. One group, Squad 303, a Polish hacking team that often works closely with Anonymous, created a website allowing the general public to “text message random Russian phone numbers, telling them the truth about the war.”[63] The website has sent text messages to 20 million cellphone numbers and millions of emails to the Russian populace. One man, Thomas Kent, believes that Russian authorities are scared of ordinary people and that is why the government censors the public from news from outside of the country that is not favorable to the government. Kent is a Cold Warrior and was the “former president of Radio Free Europe, a Cold War-era project that beamed radio programs in several languages across the Iron Curtain.”[64]
The cyberwar on Putin has been an ongoing project for the members of Anonymous. On April 20, 2022, the hacktivist group posted a tweet saying, “#Anonymous #OpRussia continues and it is the largest global hacktivist attack on a state in history. We stand with the people of Ukraine! We will not let up in our attacks until Putin withdraws Russian forces from Ukraine!”[65] The group thrives on being a decentralized group and actively recruits hackers that believe in their activist mission. In another tweet the group says, “You may get rid of one of us, but you can’t get rid of us all.”[66] This is a great example of the secrecy that is hacker culture. To suggest to authorities on such a public platform as Twitter that they cannot catch all hackers implies that hackers throughout the world are always working and cannot be caught. Mobile computers no longer require a hacker to have a giant computer workstation as David did in WarGames which means that hackers can be everywhere and can be anyone. This new type of hacker has led to improved hacking capabilities. For example, cyber warfare on Russia has led to many Russian companies such as investment firms and property management firms being hacked and having emails from the companies published on websites such as www.ddosecrets.com.[67] The purposes of the hacks is to expose the inner workings of the Russian government and to cause chaos in Putin’s administration. Perhaps not all of these hackers have seen the film WarGames, but, as with Red Dawn, the popularity of the film increased slightly with the invasion of Ukraine (see Appendix A, Figure 2).
The Real-Life Red Dawn and the Cycle of Politics and Media
The media-politics feedback loop might be most visible with respect to Ukraine and Red Dawn. “War is”, as Carl von Clausewitz remarked, “a mere continuation of policy by other means…not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument.”[68] The politics of the invasion of Ukraine has influenced the revisiting of the story and legacy of Red Dawn. Many Americans that grew up during the early 1980s relate the story of Red Dawn and the rag-tag band of citizen-soldiers, the “Wolverines,” to the young fighters in Ukraine. Social media has played an incredible role in the direct comparison between the war and the film. Twitter user @imobannon proposes that the Russian military is incompetent and if it was that military in Red Dawn the paratroopers would have “parachuted into the #GulfofMexico.”[69] A TikTok video shared to Twitter shows a destroyed Russian tank with “Wolverines” spray painted on the main gun tube of the tank.[70] Another photo that has made its rounds on social media pages is of a burned down Russian military vehicle tagged with “Wolverines.” This enforces the idea that politics influences media and media influences politics. Those marking up the destroyed Russian vehicles are making a political statement that they identify with the band of citizen-soldiers from an American made film.
The popular imagination of the “Wolverines” fighting back against Russian aggression has reached the formal world of American politics and media. US Representative Republican Adam Kinzinger tweeted from his personal Twitter account a photo of him captioned “it arrived. #wolverines #ukraine #reddawn.” The photo is him wearing a t-shirt that displays the Ukrainian flag overlayed with an outline of Robert from Red Dawn holding up a stolen automatic machine gun and the word “wolverines” written at the bottom.[71] Democrat Kathy Pauly, a woman running for Stephens County, Georgia County Commissioner, tweeted that she received her “wolverines” t-shirt and then watched the film.[72] Many other politicians have not made the direct connection between Red Dawn and Ukraine, but members of both major American political parties are largely united against the Putin administration and have voted to take action against the Russian president.[73] Overall, the conservative war flick that is Red Dawn has significantly resurfaced since the invasion began because Americans see the similarities between the film and the real-world actions of Ukraine citizens and soldiers.
Conclusion
The films, as I have demonstrated, were a product of the Cold War and nuclear war politics of the 1980s. Conservatives argued that freezing nuclear development would provide the Soviets an edge to win the Cold War. Meanwhile, the liberals argued that for all of humankind, nuclear development must be immediately frozen on both sides. It is worth mentioning that both liberals and conservatives wanted to one day rid the world of nuclear weapons, but they saw vastly different ways to achieve those ends. The politics of foreign policy and nuclear war were dramatized in popular culture. Red Dawn demonstrated why the U.S. must increase its nuclear arsenal, matching the nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union. WarGames argued that the conservatives had it all wrong and that nuclear war was unwinnable and the only way to win and survive was to not play Global Thermonuclear War. Both films had an impact on real-world topics during their own time, but as time passed their impact became more pronounced. WarGames remained relevant with the way in which it portrayed hackers and their culture. Red Dawn being a Cold War film lost relevance once the Iron Curtain was torn down and the Cold War ended in United States victory. Yet, the underdog story of Red Dawn lived on and touched the people of the former Soviet Union. I demonstrated that the politics-media feedback loop influenced the way in which Red Dawn and WarGames shaped and reflected certain time periods. Both films’ history and the way they are remembered changed over time. In analyzing the films in relation to Cold War, Reagan-era politics, the two films fit nicely into the conservative or liberal camp. But when re-examined for their cultural significance, both American and global, they unite in the effort to defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these two films is they had a global impact, and they are a strong case study of American popular culture in a global context.
[1] There are some who argue that Reagan’s strong stand against the Soviets, especially after Presidents Carter and Ford and their dovish approach to foreign policy, was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. But Reagan’s hardline approach against the Soviets greatly influenced the first years of his presidency. This debate is an interesting one, but does not have a place in this essay. Rowland and Jones take on part of this debate in their essay. Robert C Rowland and John M Jones, “Reagan’s Strategy for the Cold War and the Evil Empire Address,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 19, no. 3 (2016): 427, https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.3.0427.
[2] George C Herring, From Colony to Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 895.
[3] Senator Kennedy was one of the leading advocates in the U.S. Senate for freezing nuclear weapons development. He debated his opponent Senator Humphrey on July 7, 1982, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he argued his position. The quote in this essay comes from a May 11, 1982, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Christopher A Kojm, ed., The Nuclear Freeze Debate (New York: H.W. Wilson Co, 1983), 70; “Live Televised Debate on the Nuclear Freeze,” The Institute of Politics at Harvard University, accessed March 11, 2022, https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/live-televised-debate-nuclear-freeze.
[4] Richard H. King, “American Political Culture Since 1945,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America: A Companion, eds. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2002), 160.
[5] Richard H. King, “American Political Culture Since 1945,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2002), 159.
[6] Ibid, 160.
[7] Hawks and doves were labels used to denote if a person was pro-war or pro-peace. If a person was hawkish they tended to desire military involvement to promote some sort of goal. Dovishness was used to indicated if a person would likely employ peaceful measures to promote some sort of goal. George C. Herring explains the origin of the terms. George C Herring, From Colony to Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 720.
[8] Beth A Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Missouri, Mo.: University Of Missouri Press, 2000), 109.
[9] There are numerous scholars that wrote on the debate in the early 1980s. See Christopher A Kojm, ed., The Nuclear Freeze Debate (New York: H.W. Wilson Co, 1983).
[10] The Able Archer situation of November 1983 almost caused a world war when the Soviet Union believed NATO was ready to strike. Able Archer exercises had been an annual exercise by NATO countries during the 1970s and early 1980s. The situation in 1983 changed when the exercises included heads of state from various NATO countries. Although the Soviet Union was informed that there would be exercises, the Soviets still went on high alert and expected to have to retaliate in the event of a nuclear strike from NATO. There are numerous examples of close calls of an accidental nuclear war being initiated due to various events. Both sides of the Cold War experienced computer and satellite malfunctions and false alarms. Luckily due to the launches being human controlled these near misses never occurred. For examples and of the history of nuclear war near misses, see, “Accidental Nuclear War: A Timeline of Close Calls - Future of Life Institute,” Future of Life Institute, 2016, https://futureoflife.org/background/nuclear-close-calls-a-timeline/.
[11] WarGames (Beverly Hill, California: MGM/UA Entertainment Company, 1983), 1:48:30.
[12] There is an entire field of study on youth culture and the role the bedroom plays in it, which has allowed for a robust understanding of the way in which the bedroom plays on the youth, popular culture, and, more recently, social media. This field of study could be interesting when examining the social media culture that has emerged from Eastern Europe during the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. See Siân Lincoln, Youth Culture and Private Space, “Conclusion: Youth Culture and Private Spaces,” (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137031082_8.
[13] WarGames (Beverly Hill, California: MGM/UA Entertainment Company, 1983), 20:05.
[14] A similar sign can be seen on the gates of NORAD in the first few minutes of the film. Signs like these are commonplace in military installations and other government buildings. It is less likely to be seen on privately owned buildings.
[15] There is a number of films that feature the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in one context or another. See Ben Mitchell, “From ‘War Games’ to ‘Interstellar’: NORAD’s Bunker Is a Film Favorite,” USA TODAY, June 12, 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/12/cheyenne-mountain-norad-pop-culture/71074868/.
[16] Ben Mitchell, “From ‘War Games’ to ‘Interstellar’: NORAD’s Bunker Is a Film Favorite.”
[17] WarGames (Beverly Hill, California: MGM/UA Entertainment Company, 1983), 58:28.
[18] Futurist Elon Musk has stated several times that unleashed artificial intelligence (AI) could be a serious, grave even, danger to humankind and that an oversight body of experts must regulate the innovation of AI. Furthermore, Stephen Hawking warned that AI could end humankind. Castelo and Ward argue that conservatives have an aversion to AI. See Rory Cellan-Jones, “Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind,” BBC News, December 2, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540; RITM 1, “Elon Musk on Artificial Intelligence,” YouTube Video, YouTube, October 14, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H15uuDMqDK0;
Noah Castelo and Adrian F. Ward, “Conservatism Predicts Aversion to Consequential Artificial Intelligence,” ed. Ali B. Mahmoud, PLOS ONE 16, no. 12 (December 20, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261467.
[19] DVDXtras, “The Making of WarGames,” www.youtube.com, February 17, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEzUHgSfPc8&list=PLAHAD-jkonn8bNQLkmQZnDw1oi6n6I1n2&index=13&t=2979s, 3:23.
[20] Tony Shaw and Denise J. Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 33.
[21] DVDXtras, “The Making of WarGames,” 42:18.
[22] Guy Morris, “Sci-Fi vs Sci-Fi Thriller,” MysteryandSuspense.com (Mystery and Suspense Magazine, November 24, 2020), https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/sci-fi-vs-sci-fi-thriller/#:~:text=A%20sci%2Dfi%20thriller%20wants.
[23] Scott Brown, “WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks into Stars,” web.archive.org, July 12, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20110712221432/http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-08/ff_wargames?currentPage=all.
[24] Scott Brown, “WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks into Stars.”
[25] DVDXtras, “The Making of WarGames,” 41:19.
[26] Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne were right-wing scholars through the Hudson Institute that argued against freezing nuclear development and for the policy of deterrence as the best way to prevent a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR. They also argued that the US should plan to survive and win a nuclear war by enhancing its nuclear strike capabilities. See Christopher A Kojm, ed., The Nuclear Freeze Debate (New York: H.W. Wilson Co, 1983), 56-67.
[27] Red Dawn (Beverly Hills, California: MGM/UA Entertainment Company, 1984).
[28] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 2007), 273.
[29] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 275.
[30] Henry Kamerling, “Zombies and the City,” in The Spaces and Places of Horror, eds. Francesco Pascuzzi and Sarah Waters (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2020), p. 146.
[31] Ibid, 146.
[32] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 270.
[33] Alex Ferrari, “The High and Lows of Directing in Hollywood with Kevin Reynolds - IFH,” Indie Film Hustle, March 2, 2021, https://indiefilmhustle.com/kevin-reynolds/.
[34] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 270.
[35] Ibid, 270.
[36] Ibid, 270.
[37] For further reading on Alexander Haig see Roger Morris, Haig, the General’s Progress (New York: Playboy Press, 1982).
[38] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 270.
[39] Invasion U.S.A. (1952) was the other film that depicted the Soviets invading American soil. See Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 273.
[40] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold, 276.
[41] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold 276
[42] Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold 270.
[43] Stephanie Ricker Schulte, “‘The WarGames Scenario,’” Television & New Media 9, no. 6 (March 20, 2008): 487–513, https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476408323345.
[44] For further reading on hackers and hacking culture see Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture (Minneapolis Univ. Of Minnesota Press, 2003) andKevin F Steinmetz, Hacked: A Radical Approach to Hacker Culture and Crime (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 2016).
[45] Stephanie Ricker Schulte, “‘The WarGames Scenario,’” Television & New Media 9, no. 6.
[46] Tony Shaw and Denise J. Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 33.
[47] Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture (Minneapolis Univ. Of Minnesota Press, 2003), ix.
[48] Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture, 26.
[49] Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture, 26.
[50] Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture, 28.
[51] Douglas Thomas, 28.
[52] Douglas Thomas, 31.
[53] Tom Huddleston Jr, “What Is Anonymous? How the Infamous ‘Hacktivist’ Group Went from 4chan Trolling to Launching Cyberattacks on Russia,” CNBC, March 25, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/25/what-is-anonymous-the-group-went-from-4chan-to-cyberattacks-on-russia.html.
[54] Tom Huddleston Jr, “What Is Anonymous? How the Infamous ‘Hacktivist’ Group Went from 4chan Trolling to Launching Cyberattacks on Russia,”
[55] The MOVIEmeter, according to IMDb, provides “industry professionals with insights into the popularity of film and television productions as well as the people and companies that make them.” See IMDB Help Center, “IMDb | Help,” IMDb.com, accessed April 27, 2022, https://help.imdb.com/article/imdbpro/industry-research/starmeter-moviemeter-and-companymeter-faq/GSPB7HDNPKVT5VHC?recentlyAuthenticated=false#.
[56] The 2012 Red Dawn portrayed an invasion of North Korean soldiers. The premise of this film is very similar the 1984 version with a band of citizen-soldiers that must fight to protect their home.
[57] DVDXtras, “The Making of WarGames,” www.youtube.com, February 17, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEzUHgSfPc8&list=PLAHAD-jkonn8bNQLkmQZnDw1oi6n6I1n2&index=13&t=2979s.
[58] John Milius, a self-reported conservative said in an interview that he believes in rugged individualism. DVDXtras, “The Making of Red Dawn Part 1/2,” www.youtube.com, September 21, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZrVLnF5wjk, 3:28.
[59] Al Jazeera Staff, “‘No Other Option’: Excerpts of Putin’s Speech Declaring War,” www.aljazeera.com, February 24, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/24/putins-speech-declaring-war-on-ukraine-translated-excerpts.
[60] Joe Tidy, “Anonymous: How Hackers Are Trying to Undermine Putin,” BBC News, March 20, 2022, sec. Technology, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60784526#:~:text=The%20Anonymous%20hacktivist%20collective%20has.
[61] Anonymous TV, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, February 26, 2022, https://twitter.com/YourAnonTV/status/1497678663046905863?s=20&t=3HckSVXqlma-qjwJHjYaDA.
[62]Joe Tidy, “Anonymous: How Hackers Are Trying to Undermine Putin.”
[63] Joe Tidy, “Anonymous: How Hackers Are Trying to Undermine Putin,”
[64] Loukia Papadopoulos, “A New Website Allows People to Text Russians about the War in Ukraine,” interestingengineering.com, March 13, 2022, https://interestingengineering.com/website-text-russians-war-ukraine.
[65]Anonymous, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 20, 2022, https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/1516846188896694273?s=20&t=XPWfZTyKRW19l6o7DRwblA.
[66]Anonymous, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 20, 2022.
[67] See www.ddosecrets.com for more lists of emails that have been acquired by Anonymous.
[68] “Clausewitz: War as Politics by Other Means | Online Library of Liberty,” Online Library of Liberty, n.d., https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/clausewitz-war-as-politics-by-other-means.
[69]Isaac O’Bannon, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 20, 2022, https://twitter.com/imobannon/status/1516984678623985664?s=20&t=eIUnA2TyjnFOcPZHI0bPcQ.
[70]Rob Lee, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 14, 2022, https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1514757095010312197.
[71]Adam Kinzinger, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 13, 2022, https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1514400053724684289?s=20&t=eIUnA2TyjnFOcPZHI0bPcQ.
[72]Kathy Pauly, “Twitter Post,” Twitter, April 19, 2022, https://twitter.com/paulybriana/status/1516631000419385344?s=20&t=eIUnA2TyjnFOcPZHI0bPcQ.
[73] Caitlin Huey-Burns, “Republicans Are Backing an Aggressive Policy toward Ukraine, Breaking with Trump,” www.cbsnews.com, March 21, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-republican-policy-trump/.