Cyber War Games: Strategic Jostling Among Traditional Adversaries

Abstract

Cyber warfare has been simmering for a long time and has gradually morphed into a key strategic weapon in international conflicts. Doctrines of several countries consider cyber warfare capability as essential to gain strategic superiority or as a counterbalance to military inferiority. Countries are attempting to reach consensus on confidence building measures in cyber space while racing with each other to acquire cyber weaponry. These attempts are strongly influenced by the problem of clear attribution of cyber incidents as well as political imperatives. Game theory has been used in the past for such problems in international relations where players compete with each other and the actions of the players are interdependent. Problems in cyber warfare can benefit from similar game theoretic concepts. We discuss in this book chapter the state of cyber warfare, the key imperatives for the countries, and articulate how countries are jostling with each other in the cyber domain especially in the context of poor attribution and verification in the cyber domain. We present game theoretic models for a few representative problems in the cyber warfare domain.