WarGames
Find out why—almost 40 years later—this 1980s Cold War thriller isn’t so fictional after all. Before the film, MIT professor Srini Devadas will give an overview of cybersecurity risks and Artificial Intelligence, then and now.
Now heralded as a “geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy” (Wired), WarGames stars a young Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker who unwittingly initiates a US military supercomputer programmed to execute nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
Part delightfully tense techno-thriller, part refreshingly unpatronizing teen drama, WarGames is one of the more inventive—and genuinely suspenseful—Cold War movies of the 1980s.
About the Speaker
Srini Devadas is the Webster Professor of EECS at MIT where he has been on the faculty since 1988. His current research interests are in computer security, computer architecture and applied cryptography. Devadas received the 2015 ACM/IEEE Richard Newton award, the 2017 IEEE W. Wallace McDowell award and the 2018 IEEE Charles A. Desoer award for his research in secure hardware. He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE. Devadas is the author of Programming for the Puzzled (MIT Press, 2017), a book that builds a bridge between the recreational world of algorithmic puzzles and the pragmatic world of computer programming, teaching readers to program while solving puzzles. He is a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, an Everett Moore Baker and a Bose award recipient, considered MIT's highest teaching honors.
