The Hill News

Rumor has it that Leonardo DiCaprio plans to remake the 1983 blockbuster WarGames, in which a young Matthew Broderick hacked into the government’s computer system and nearly triggered a thermonuclear Armageddon. Even thought the Soviet Union is long gone, it’s easy to see how the time is ripe for a remake.

In fact, the world is now a much more dangerous place. In 1983, only a handful of countries had nuclear weapons. Today, the nuclear genie has long left the bottle. Countries like Pakistan, China, and Russia have created a vibrant international market for nuclear and missile technologies, providing centrifuges, rockets, and know-how to countries like Iran and North Korea. Intelligence reports from the U.S., the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the British government estimate that these countries will develop nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting a U.S. city within a few years â€" not decades as some assume.

But there’s! a real-world twist to the story that will make screenwriters working on WarGames rejoice and everyone else despair. Congress is poised to slash funding for our national defense just as these threats are on the rise, all because of a technicality imposed by the debt ceiling deal. Among many other critical military programs, missile defense could take a serious hit. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

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