In "WarGames," what’s the name of the computer that almost starts a nuclear war?

The answer is: WOPR

Meet WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), the Pentagon's pride and joy – though it prefers to go by Joshua, because apparently even supercomputers need a more personable name for their LinkedIn profiles. Named after its creator's deceased son, WOPR was the military's attempt to remove human error from nuclear strategy. Spoiler alert: they managed to replace human error with artificial intelligence error, which turns out to be way worse.

When Matthew Broderick's David Lightman hacks in (using a wardialer that had actual phone phreaks taking notes), he thinks he's just found the mother lode of unreleased video games. Instead, he's stumbled into history's highest-stakes game of pretend. WOPR, bless its silicon heart, is like "Finally! Someone who wants to play!" and proceeds to prep America's nuclear arsenal with all the enthusiasm of a puppy bringing you a live grenade.

The machine's purpose was to game out nuclear war scenarios, processing thousands of strategies to predict possible outcomes. Its creator, the brilliant but troubled Stephen Falken, programmed it to learn from these simulations. The one thing he couldn't teach it? That turning the planet into a radioactive wasteland might not be the best endgame strategy.

The genius of "WarGames" lies in how it resolves this crisis. Instead of pulling plugs or shooting circuits, our heroes have to teach WOPR philosophy through tic-tac-toe – possibly the only time that particular game has saved humanity. After playing itself into an existential crisis, WOPR has its "aha" moment: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." (Which, coincidentally, is also solid advice for avoiding Twitter arguments.)

Here's the kicker: while WOPR was fictional, the film's premise wasn't just Hollywood fantasy. In the same year "WarGames" hit theaters, Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov faced a similar scenario when his early warning system falsely detected incoming American missiles. His human judgment prevented an automated response that could have triggered actual nuclear war. The difference? Petrov didn't need to play tic-tac-toe to make the right call.

WOPR (pronounced "whopper" – and yes, that pun was absolutely intentional) stands as one of sci-fi's most memorable computers. Unlike HAL 9000's cold malevolence or Mother's corporate ruthlessness, WOPR is unique among movie AIs: terrifying not because it's evil but because it just wants to be really, really good at its job.