Space Debris and Game Theory
One area in which game theory applies in real life is the issue of space debris. Over the past 50 years, thousands of objects have been launched into space and many of them are uncontrolled. Additionally, several countries have tested anti-satellite weapons which have blown satellites into hundreds or thousands of pieces of debris. Since objects in space move extremely quickly, even collisions between a satellite and a small piece of debris will be catastrophic since the relative speeds are often over 10km/s, resulting in even more debris. This cascade effect is know as Kessler Syndrome, and over long periods of time could make it impossible to leave Earth.
Removing space debris is extremely difficult because the objects are small, moving very fast, and often tumbling. Combined with the very high cost of launching things into space, directly fighting the problem is extremely expensive. This leads to a game setup where each player (countries in this case), have to choose whether they will spend large sums of money on removing debris which could threaten future satellites or launching more satellites that directly help their goals, like additional reconnaissance and communication satellites. This leads to a situation where any single country that tries to combat space debris will have a geopolitical disadvantage compared to other countries since they have fewer useful satellites, but if nobody combats the problem most satellites could be destroyed and humanity imprisoned on Earth, an example of tragedy of the commons on a huge scale. This is very similar to other games we have looked at because if only one country decides to remove space debris it will benefit everyone equally but be very costly for that one nation, so every group wants someone else to take the loss for them. Not cleaning debris seems to be a dominant strategy until space debris is routinely destroying satellites, which means solutions outside game theory must be found to solve this problem.