Secrecy and Deception in Anti-Terrorism Resource Allocation and Policy Implication

In this paper, we develop a game-theoretic model for whether and what a defender should disclose about her resource allocation in the homeland-security context. Our model allows us to explore whether the defender should disclose correct information about her defensive resource allocation (truthful disclosure), incorrect information (deception), or no information (secrecy). In the case where only the attacker (if anyone) has private information (i.e., the defender does not know some attacker attributes, such as their goals or capabilities), our analysis suggests that the defender should always prefer truthful disclosure, possibly including disclosure of a mixed strategy. By contrast, in the case where the defender has private information (i.e., the attacker does not know some defender attributes, such as asset values or costs), our analysis shows that there exist some equilibria in which secrecy and/or deception can be strictly preferred by some types of defenders, in order to mimic defender types that are of less interest to attackers—e.g., defender types that may be less valuable, or less cost-effective to attack. Although we study secrecy and deception specifically in the homeland-security context, we believe that our work can also provide useful insights in other contexts, such as business competition.