owl, yea, the simulation itself was flawed because it was designed by the people Van Riper ended up beating. That’s part of the problem Van Riper should be helping us to solve.
Have you ever read the novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card? It’s relevant here in a few ways. I’ll take the liberty of discussing a bit of it and revealing nonessential plot points. I won’t use the spoiler tags because I won’t give away any spoilers (I hope).
The novel is based around selecting young geniuses to lead the forces of Earth against an alien menace. They are all shipped up to Battle School, a huge complex dug into the asteroid Eros, to play games that simulate small-scale infantry combat in zero-gravity rooms. The games obviously do not reflect the war against the aliens the high command has planned, but they do develop tactical thinking in the students and train them to work in combat as a team.
Ender is one of the best, not the very brightest but certainly the best leader. He goes into Battle School and he bends the rules with unorthodox tactics: He has his soldiers wound themselves so disabled limbs can be used as shields, for example, and he deliberately rejects the estabilshed system of near-Napoleonic regimentation that had pervaded the groups. The details, of course, don’t matter: He sees the game for what it is and breaks down the established norms to teach himself and others the important lessons.
What are those lessons? Think like your enemy. Tailor your tactics to the realities, not the theories, and never mistake conventions for rules. Van Riper, like Ender, bent the rules of the game so far he almost (or almost certainly) broke them, but the game really isn’t important. By doing something so unexpected the military had no response, he proved to them that they desperately need change.
What did the military do? Whined at Van Riper for cheating (which he did, of course, not that it matters) and went back to its old routine. Maybe they changed the game. Maybe cheating in a wargame is now a court-martial offense. Doesn’t matter. They took the real test and they failed.
Van Riper has seen this before. He is a Vietnam veteran, someone who gained combat experience against another foe who cheated left and right. Creating tiger traps lined with sharp sticks smeared with human excrement just isn’t done in the West, but the VC didn’t have a problem with that. Hiding a military force in a densely-packed civilian population coming into Saigon to celebrate the Lunar New Year (Tet in Vietnamese), that force hiding weapons in coffins being carried in from the countryside, also isn’t done and learning that it’s feasible cost us countless lives. Winning a war while never winning a pitched battle is also not done, is considered impossible even now, but it cost South Vietnam its independence.
We haven’t learned the lesson the Van Ripers of the world try to teach us gently, and we never do until the Ho Chi Minhs, the Osama bin Ladins, and the Saddam Husseins host the final exams.