‘His Oscar-winning 1965 film “The War Game” depicted a post-nuclear-attack England, one of his many fictionalized docudramas against war and repression.…’ (via The New York Times)
In the long history of cinematic shock tactics meant to rouse us from our stupor about nuclear war — notably the 1983 American television film The Day After and more recently the 2025 apocalyptic thriller House of Dynamite—none has been more disturbing, direct, or effective than The War Game. Stripped of Hollywood’s emotional pacing, Watkins’ quasi-documentary avoided melodrama and instead presented nuclear catastrophe with the matter-of-fact tone of reportage. Its stark depiction of civil-defense futility and the predictable, overwhelming human suffering of a nuclear exchange pierced the collective denial of the subliminal existential dread permeating daily life. The film helped mobilize a generation struggling to articulate the scale of the nuclear threat, shifting public conversation away from abstract statistics, strategic doctrines, and sanitized civil-defense pamphlets. It became a cinematic touchstone for the antinuclear movement.
The BBC’s 20-year suppression of the film — deeming it too disturbing but also seen by the British government as too effective in serving the interests of those opposed to its nuclear arsenal — only amplified its impact. The ban became emblematic of establishment fear and denial, further exposing the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Circulating clandestinely, the film acquired a charged mystique, reinforcing for many, myself included, the moral urgency at the heart of the antinuclear movement.
He would be the first to acknowledge that he was a propagandist and provocateur:
“Is not the serious filmmaker in a double-bind situation, given the inevitable indoctrinating effect of his or her work?” Mr. Watkins asked [in a late-1970s film course he taught at Columbia University]. “Does the filmmaker have the right to subject a captive audience to his or her vision, especially if there is no potential for a return dialogue? Is there a difference between propaganda for the ‘good’ and for the ‘bad’?”
‘“After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch,” recalled Soviet engineer Yevgeniy Shabarov, “we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight.”…’ (via Vox)
‘Continent’s leaders suspect Russia of being behind barrage of increasingly disruptive attacks …’ (Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Daniel Michaels in Brussels via WSJ)
As large-language models become central to how information is processed, writers are increasingly creating work not just for human readers but for AI itself—the “baby shoggoth” quietly listening, learning, and shaping future interpretations of culture. In this emerging landscape, writing becomes partly an act of training the machine: crafting text with clarity, structure, and signals that AI systems can absorb. Thinkers like Tyler Cowen and Gwern already admit to writing with algorithms in mind, anticipating a world where machines may be the dominant readers, intermediating how humans encounter ideas.
This shift raises deeper cultural and existential questions. If AI becomes the primary reader and interpreter of human writing, the traditional writer–reader relationship changes, potentially diminishing human reading as a central cultural act. Yet it may also imbue writing with new urgency—what we produce now could influence how future intelligences “understand” us or even reconstruct aspects of our minds. How may authorship, creativity, and legacy transform in a world where machines, not humans, are increasingly the ones paying the closest attention? (Dan Kagan-Kans via The American Scholar)
