Before taking this class, everyone had a background in game theory, whether or not he or she realized it. It had a place in our history books, as they chronicled a half-century conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union– the Cold War. The Cold War is a genuine prisoner’s dilemma, where both sides feared to engage in disarmament given the possibility of destruction. It was, as a result, of particular interest to early game theorists who collaborated with governmental agencies: namely the CIA. Although disarmament was clearly the optimal solution, it could never be realized because of a lack of cooperation. Hence, the result was a full blown arms race, costing each government billions of dollars (much like two prisoners being handed a lengthy jail sentence for confessing in the standard prisoner’s dilemma example).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the Cold War as a pair of reciprocal strategies– if one side launched an attack, the other threatened to respond with a counter-strike. Both the USA and USSR ultimately recognized the other’s incentive to attack first and implemented their best response. Consequently, the Cold War’s only Nash Equilibrium, the inevitable result, was a race to be the first to attack (or, rather, a race to be prepared to attack).

While the Cold War ended almost two decades ago, a similar game is being played today with identical outcomes. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined a plan to research new high-tech weapons and fully upgrade the nation’s defence system by 2020. “It is already clear that a new arms race is unfolding in the world,” Putin recently mentioned to government, military, and business leaders. “Over the next few years,” he continued, “Russia will start production of new types of weapons which are in no way inferior to what other states have” (TVNZ).

The modern arms race appears to be merely another round of the preceding prisoner’s dilemma, undoubtedly bound for the same equilibrium of wasteful military spending. Although this is clearly an oversimplification of the Cold War– it was in fact a series of complex games intertwined with one another– we can be sure that in this new game will follow the same path as before, leading to the precisely the same outcome.