Strategic decision-making in uncertain and adversarial environments is crucial for the security of modern systems and infrastructures. A salient feature of many optimal decision-making policies is a level of unpredictability, or randomness, which helps to keep an adversary uncertain about the system's behavior. This paper seeks to explore decision-making policies on the other end of the spectrum -- namely, whether there are benefits in revealing one's strategic intentions to an opponent before engaging in competition. We study these scenarios in a well-studied model of competitive resource allocation problem known as General Lotto games. In the classic formulation, two competing players simultaneously allocate their assets to a set of battlefields, and the resulting payoffs are derived in a zero-sum fashion. Here, we consider a multi-step extension where one of the players has the option to publicly pre-commit assets in a binding fashion to battlefields before play begins. In response, the opponent decides which of these battlefields to secure (or abandon) by matching the pre-commitment with its own assets. They then engage in a General Lotto game over the remaining set of battlefields. Interestingly, this paper highlights many scenarios where strategically revealing intentions can actually significantly improve one's payoff. This runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that randomness should be a central component of decision-making in adversarial environments.
翻译:在不确定和敌对的环境中进行战略决策对于现代系统和基础设施的安全至关重要。许多最佳决策政策的一个显著特点是不可预测性或随机性,这有助于让对手对系统的行为保持不确定性。本文件试图探讨另一端的决策政策,即,在竞争开始前向对手披露自己的战略意图是否有益处;我们以一个经过仔细研究的竞争性资源分配问题模式(即洛托将军游戏)来研究这些情景。在经典的提法中,两个竞争者同时将其资产分配给一组战场,由此产生的报酬以零和方式产生。在这里,我们考虑一个多步延伸,让一个参与者在游戏开始前可以选择以约束的方式向战场公开预先承诺资产。作为回应,对手决定这些战场的哪些是安全的(或放弃的),办法是将承诺前的与自己的资产相匹配。他们随后在洛托将军的游戏中将资产分配给一组战场,而由此产生的回报则以零和零和方式产生。在这里,我们考虑一个多步延伸,让一个参与者在游戏开始前可以选择公开将资产预先承诺在战场上公开。在游戏开始之前公开进行;作为回应,对手决定这些战场的哪些是哪些战场,它们自己的资产;他们随后将参与一个普通的游戏游戏。有趣的游戏游戏,这个文件强调许多战略思维的概率,在其中可以显著地展示。