Skip to who knows what
The Situation Room
Commission
  1. 10 / 10 layers
  2. Flights
  3. Wires
  4. Money
  5. Weather
  6. Cables
  7. Satellites
  8. Incidents
  9. Closures
  10. Shipping
  11. Imagery

A live crisis simulation

You cannot rehearse the crisis. You can rehearse the decision.

One living world. Any institution, any crisis, any number of people. Everyone sees only what their role would see, and the world answers what they decide.

See it inside the Theater Commission a situation

Control sees all of this.

Nobody else in the exercise does.

Each role gets a slice: partial, filtered and late. This one belongs to an imagery analyst, twenty minutes behind the world.

02 · Inside the Theater

This is what they see. Recorded inside the Theater.

Eight scenarios as the people in them experience them, and two taken apart afterwards: a strike in 4D, and twelve days of a real war rebuilt from open reporting. Real places, live layers of the real world, and the exercise's own ships, strikes, searches, orders and leaks written on top.

Homeland · attackThree drones for the Ship Channel

Recorded in the Theater · Imagery © Google, Cesium · Live layers: city traffic cameras (London: powered by TfL Open Data), OpenStreetMap, NIFC fire perimeters, OpenSky flights, AIS ship positions, Open-Meteo wind · Red Sea thermal shots: Copernicus DEM and Sentinel-2, ESA; its sources and models are credited in the clip · Markings in red, and frames marked simulated, are exercise material

03 · Who knows what

Every institution is a filter.

Pick an institution and a role. The globe shows what that role would see, how precisely and how late. Then release one piece of intelligence and watch it climb.

Click anyone on the chart to see through their eyes. Make someone on the chain sit on it, before or during the climb, and see who never finds out.

Viewing as Imagery analystNo delay

  • Imagery

One image, live

Intelligence · A second tanker at the berthNot released

  1. —Imagery analyst
  2. —Director of National Intelligence
  3. —National Security Advisor
  4. —The President

04 · The crisis arrives

Nothing arrives to everyone. Nothing arrives at once.

A cable to two desks. An image to the intelligence chiefs. A leak that reaches everyone, and a market only Treasury is watching. Each lands on a few people, and each has a place.

Simulated02:14ZFlash cableLands on 2 of 12

  1. Flash cable02:14Z

    From NSA

    Lands onDNIDefense
  2. Imagery02:21Z
    From Imagery analyst
    Daylight image of the ship
    The same ship in thermal
    IREO
    Lands onDNICIA
  3. Social · leak02:40Z
    From @portwatch
    Port Watch @portwatch · 2m
    Second tanker loading at the Jose berth. Satellite shows it plain as day. Why is nobody in Washington talking about this?
    1,204 reposts4,094 likes
    Lands onEveryone
  4. Markets02:45Z
    From Brent crude
    $91.30 +8.6% · 30 min
    Insurers pulling cover on Caribbean routes
    Lands onTreasury
05 · Voices
Some of it calls. Some of it asks. And you can ask back.
Counterparts call with deadlines. Journalists ask with the podium clock running. In an exercise both are AI voices, and Control has one more: the Theater itself. Ask it out loud who could have seen a coast, what was actually photographed, and to be shown it.
Recorded in the Theater. Control’s questions are a synthetic voice reading a script; every answer is the voice agent’s own, cut only for length.
Read the transcript
Recorded in the Theater on 30 Sep 2026 with its live voice agent (OpenAI gpt-realtime) · Answers unscripted, cut for length, never re-voiced or reordered · Satellite passes reconstructed from today’s orbital elements (CelesTrak) run back · Pictures: Copernicus Sentinel-2, ESA, from the public archive; published commercial images are cited, not shown · Base imagery: Esri World Imagery · The call and the press conference are exercise material
06 · The world answers back
Decide, and the world moves. Both ways.
Every decision forks the exercise. Make the call, then drag between the future you chose and the one you did not, four hours on.
02:31Z · now
Decision · 02:31Z
The destroyer is 4,000 yards from the escort. The tanker will not stop.
Four hours onInterceptShadow
Brent crude$97.40 · +11%$88.10 · +1%
Coalition2 of 7 partners walk out7 of 7 hold, quietly
Security CouncilEmergency session at 09:00No meeting called
Crew31 detained on boardAshore in Havana
Next injectMoscow recalls its ambassadorA second tanker leaves the berth
Illustrative figures from the scenario. In an exercise, Control sets how the world answers each branch.
07 · Every screen has a job
Fifty people, one world. No two screens alike.
Control runs the world. The projector shows what is public. Each team's screen shows what the team has pieced together, and each phone shows one person's slice. Information moves only when someone moves it.
The projectorWHAT IS PUBLICAureliaNO DELAYBorvia4 MIN BEHINDCastell9 MIN BEHINDDravia2 MIN BEHINDEsmer12 MIN BEHINDFenwick6 MIN BEHINDControlSEES EVERYTHING
Choose what happens.
Teams told
0 / 6
Phones told
0 / 48
On the projector
No
Players who see everything
0
08 · The record
Every decision, and what was known when it was made.
The debrief replays the exercise: what arrived, who knew, who decided, and the minutes in between. Drag through it, or play it through.
T+02:30Arrived
The clock stops. Debrief
Events
8
Decisions
5
Last decision
President
Knew, not yet told
—
An illustrative debrief. After a real exercise, this is built from the room's own log.
09 · First run
Operation Southern Ledger ran live at Columbia SIPA. Twelve principals, one clock, no rehearsal.
  • 12 principals
  • 150 minutes
  • AI counterparts and press
  • A decision ledger
Take part
Bring your institution. We bring the world.
A council of twelve, fifty delegates at peace talks, a staff, a newsroom, a board. We write the crisis, cast the roles and their lenses, and run it live, with AI counterparts and a press pack that will not wait.
45 minutes · up to 12Book a demo crisisWe run it; you decide.Your institution · your crisisCommission a situationWritten, cast and run for you.
Skip to the recordings
The Situation Room
Commission
A live crisis simulation
You cannot rehearse the crisis. You can rehearse the decision.
One living world. Any institution, any crisis. Everyone sees only what their role would see.
See it inside the Theater 
Control sees all of this.
Nobody else in the exercise does.
Each role gets a slice: partial, filtered and late. This one is an imagery analyst's, twenty minutes behind the world.
10 of 10 layers onScroll ↓
  • Flights
  • Wires
  • Money
  • Weather
  • Cables
  • Satellites
  • Incidents
  • Closures
  • Shipping
  • Imagery
First run
Operation Southern Ledger ran live at Columbia SIPA. Twelve principals, one clock, no rehearsal.
  • 12 principals
  • 150 minutes
  • AI counterparts and press
  • A decision ledger
Inside the Theater
This is what they see. Recorded inside the Theater.
Homeland · attack
Three drones for the Ship Channel
A container ship in Galveston Bay launches three drones
Also built in the TheaterA tanker entering Havana · An MQ-9's sensor · Plate readers across Austin · A wildfire evacuation · Closing the Baltic sky · A leak reaching six capitals
Who knows what
Every institution is a filter.
One piece of intelligence climbs a chain of people. At each step it is retold shorter, and it arrives later.
Viewing as Imagery analystNo delay
Never hears of it: Secretary of State, Treasury, Secretary of Defense
In the room, each person's phone shows only their slice, the projector only what is public, and Control's screen everything.
The crisis arrives
Nothing arrives to everyone.
02:14
Simulated feed · Control sees every channel
  1. Flash cable02:14Z
    NSA
    Escort radio traffic up 300% in the last hour. Three surface contacts. One unidentified subsurface contact, 2 nm astern.
    Lands on DNI, Defense · 2 of 12
Voices
And you can ask back.
The minister on the line and the journalist at the podium are AI voices. Control has one more: the Theater itself.
Control's questions are a synthetic voice reading a script; every answer is the voice agent's own, cut only for length.
Read the transcript
The world answers back
Decide, and the world moves. Both ways.
02:31Z · now
Decision · 02:31Z
The destroyer is 4,000 yards from the escort. The tanker will not stop.
Illustrative figures from the scenario. In an exercise, Control sets how the world answers each branch.
The record
Afterwards, the whole night. In place and in time.
Every track, each kill and the impact pinned where and when it happened, and a clock that runs forward, back and anywhere between. Built from the exercise's own log.
The same strike, reconstructed
Three drones, a fighter, a helicopter, one impact
Take part
Bring your institution. We bring the world.
45 minutes · up to 12Book a demo crisisYour institution · your crisisCommission a situation