But the AI isn't making strategic decisions. It's making brain-dead ones. It analyses a play-through looking to find sections of RAM that increase as time increases. It them locks in on these sections of RAM and says "increasing the values in these sections of RAM is how I determine success." It them brute-forces a play-through with the ability to rewind time (to try a different set of inputs).

This is why he mentions that Karate Kid didn't work well, because one of the factors of a successful play-through was that your opponents health is decreasing, which is something that this AI doesn't look for.

The ability to rewind time wouldn't make for a very interesting play-through of Battleship, but depending on how game state is stored, it might not even be able to accurately deduce a good game state from a bad one.