Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma: The Importance of Game Theory in Military and War
Learning about Game Theory in class and the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, my mind turned to learn about more applications of Game Theory in the real world. A pertinent and highly relevant example is the nuclear arms race and the existing tensions between the US and North Korea. Game theory has its roots in the 1920s and is of military origin. Tim Roughgarden, professor of computer science at Stanford University who focuses on game-theoretic questions, confirms in the interview with The Washington Post that game theory has been used in thinking about military issues since the beginning of the 1940s and as a supreme strategy in the context of the Cold War era.
Clear parallelism can be seen in the Allies and the Axis Powers symbolizing Player A and Player B in a classic Game Theory equation. Making similar comparisons with the current issue of Nuclear War in this century, there is a Prisoner’s Dilemma aspect to it- the strategies being to attack or not to attack. However, this real-world scenario extends the mathematical situation to a repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Since there is the existence of a long-time interaction, the standard reasoning that we have learned of till now must be augmented by the reasoning for not just the present but also chances of retaliation in the future. The existence of a valid chance of being threatened by retaliation presents an incentive that might even end up acting against the player’s own interest. With respect to what we have learned in class, it is interesting to see how a real-world scenario of this instance of Game Theory application is so steeped in complexity and extends the standard model that we are used to.
There are numerous similarities between the repeated prisoner’s dilemma situations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Nuclear War with North Korea. As a result, a lot of the thinking behind them is similar. However, by the virtue of the fact that the real world is ever fluctuating and transient, the current situation of North Korea’s abilities is not at par with that of its opponent player. Hence, we can see a clear connection between the facts of reality and the changes that it produces in the mathematical model.
In conclusion, it is important to note that while our examples in the classroom are very much relevant to examples in the real-world, its definitions are based in an ideal world where the confidence level of the “best response” is very high. In reality, there is always an aspect of uncertainty, spontaneity, or lack of understanding that makes reasoning about a “best response” very difficult. However, while game theory may not yield transparent answers to what military steps should be taken, its ability to give us possible outcomes imparts knowledge and understanding that is exceptionally useful and relevant.