Intelligence Service for a Better Information: Application to a Terrorist Threat

Abstract

International audience ; Choosing the best strategy is not always easy when an agent is confronted to a private information on the type of another player. However, spying could be the solution. Indeed, in order to fill this lack of information, an agent could invest in an intelligence service. This private information is present in Bayesian games. The use to the spying is a good alternative in the application to the terrorist problem in the case of an attacker/ defender game. It enables the government to know the nature of the terrorist group or the strategy of them. We focus on two types of terrorists: the fanatics and the moderates. Their objectives and their strategies are not the same, so the government has to adapt to the terrorist threat. The type of the government is common knowledge: strong, average or weak. We compare the different Nash equilibria when spying let us to turn a Bayesian game into a static or dynamic game of complete information.