I don’t know when “war gaming” stopped being a Pentagon basement thing and became a university ethics department warning label — maybe right after someone decided “defensive shots” was a better phrase than “we killed a guy” — but here we are anyway.
In October 2024, the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania ran a simulation. The setup: a president orders a controversial federal law enforcement operation. The governor refuses to cooperate. The president tries to federalize the state’s National Guard. Troops split loyalty. Federal forces march. The whole thing ends in a “violent confrontation” between state and federal soldiers in a major American city.
The participants — actual government officials, former senior military leaders — didn’t think the scenario was far-fetched. The courts, they assumed, would be too slow to stop anything. The exercise was published this week in The Guardian, and the timing is grimly prescient.
Because right now, in Minneapolis, ICE agents aren’t just running the opening act of that script. They’re adding bodies to it.
Two Dead in Three Weeks
On January 7th, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, firing into her vehicle during an enforcement operation. The Justice Department declined to open a civil rights investigation — a sharp departure from past administrations.
On January 25th, Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse. Federal officials claim he was armed and “violently resisted.” Bystander video doesn’t show him holding a weapon. His family says he had his phone in his right hand and his left hand raised above his head while trying to protect a woman agents had just shoved to the ground.
The Minneapolis police chief confirmed Pretti had a permit to carry. His only prior contact with law enforcement: traffic tickets.
Two Minneapolis ICE shootings in three weeks. Same city. Same federal agency. Same official response: the agents feared for their safety, move along.
The simulation predicted a violent confrontation between state and federal forces. It didn’t account for federal forces shooting civilians while state officials stand by issuing statements.
The Playbook Is Still in Motion — Just Bloodier
The civil war simulation didn’t predict Minneapolis specifically, but the mechanics are identical: federal agents conducting operations that local officials publicly condemn, a governor caught between state sovereignty and federal authority, and a population watching to see if anyone’s going to do something other than hold a press conference.
Under a 2025 municipal ordinance, Minneapolis police can’t cooperate with ICE. They also can’t interfere. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of “we’re not helping, but we’re not stopping you either” — a position that buys time but solves nothing and apparently leaves civilians to fend for themselves.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mobilized the state’s National Guard after the second shooting. The Guard’s role: traffic control, protest management, property protection. Walz called the federal operations “organized brutality” and demanded the 3,000 federal agents leave the state.
The agents are still there. The bodies are still piling up. The National Guard is directing traffic.
What the Simulation Got Wrong
The researchers nailed the mechanics of how federal overreach could spiral into armed conflict. A president orders an operation. A governor resists — sort of. Troops mobilize. The public protests. Someone fires.
What they didn’t account for is that the “violent confrontation” wouldn’t be between state and federal forces. It would be between federal agents and civilians. The simulation envisioned soldiers facing off against soldiers. Reality delivered agents shooting a nurse holding a phone.
What’s happening in Minneapolis is slower, messier, and more chaotic — federal agents operating with apparent impunity, state officials expressing outrage without taking concrete action, and a civilian population trying to figure out whether carrying a legal firearm and observing a federal operation is now grounds for summary execution.
The Part Where Nobody Wants to Be First
The thing about simulations is that they strip out the human reluctance to do something catastrophically stupid. In a war game, participants make decisions based on logic and strategy. In real life, people hesitate. They wait for someone else to move first.
Except in Minneapolis, the situation isn’t resolving itself. Two people are dead. Federal agents are still conducting operations. State officials are still mobilizing National Guard troops for crowd control instead of confrontation. Protesters are in the streets — thousands of them, in sub-zero temperatures, chanting “resisting ICE is not a crime.” Congressional Democrats are threatening funding cuts that may or may not materialize before the next person gets shot.
The Penn researchers concluded their exercise with a violent confrontation between organized forces. The scenario didn’t explore what happened after — whether the conflict spread, whether other states joined in, whether the whole thing collapsed into sustained civil unrest.
In Minneapolis, we’re past the setup phase. The pieces aren’t just on the board anymore — they’re moving. The Minneapolis ICE shootings have turned a theoretical exercise into a grim reality check.
The only question is whether anyone involved has the sense — or the fear — to step off the path before the script reaches its conclusion.
Because the researchers didn’t think the scenario was unrealistic. They just didn’t expect to see it play out in real time with actual body bags fifteen months later.