Can't upvote this hard enough. I'm fascinated by large scale games of this kind and have a loose acquaintance with some people who run them, but it's a very tiny industry that's almost exclusively based around DC for obvious reasons.
Bless you, this is exactly my kind of thing. Thanks.
Are they online games or real life games (e.g. board games)?
I think it is a safe bet that they are mostly computer games by now, though there is a long history of using board games for training. That said, there was Freedom of Information Act request to uncover some of the games Mr. Rhunke developed for the CIA and they turned out to be physical board games.
I mean real life games, like the ones hosted by/for military and disaster planners. The only places I can think of on the west coast that might do that sort of stuff are the RAND corporation and the Naval Postgraduate school at Monterey.