The United States government employed (directly or indirectly) many of the pioneers of game theory, and much of their time was spent considering the distinctly game-theoretic problems the Cold War presented. The Cold War was in some senses a game like any other in game theory, albeit on a much larger scale and with much more immediate consequences for billions of people. In the grandest scheme of things, each side essentially had two strategies: spend or not spend. Undoubtedly, each would have been better off choosing not to commit huge sums of money to defense and intelligence. The unfortunate catch was that each player’s dominant strategy was to spend, irrespective of the opponent’s choice. This led to a profusion of advanced technology and weaponry, but since each side’s forces were roughly balanced against each other there was no net gain from these massive outlays of capital. [More discussion here]

Embedded within the larger game was another game, just as serious as the first. The playing of this game was a cause of great concern for the governments and citizenry of each of the players (not to mention much of the world), and both sought to understand the mechanics and outcomes of it. The nuclear standoff with the U.S.S.R. and the notion of “Mutually Assured Destruction” had all the hallmarks of game-theory. [Lecture on this subject]

Both nations had a policy of commensurate response to a nuclear attack, and to this end each maintained two classes of weapons platforms. The primary ones were the first-strike mechanisms, which were designed to initiate a strike and completely eliminate the target’s ability to retaliate. These were usually hardened missile silos on the territory of one of the powers or its allies. To prevent a first-strike, each country invested heavily in second-strike weapons to be employed afterwards. Owing to the fact that much of the command-chain of the military might not survive the initial bombing, “fail-deadly” systems were created. These served to ensure that isolated military agents be able to retaliate without explicit authorization. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stated that the arms race could be reduced to the objective of preventing the other side from attaining first-strike capability. This desire to present a credible second-strike capability as a first-strike deterrent spurred the development of independently operating nuclear weapons centers. Among these were ballistic missile submarines and continuously-flying bombers tracing routes over preselected targets. These were designed to retain the ability to retaliate even if a significant portion of either country’s defense infrastructure was destroyed, and typically would have several authorization procedures by which they could deploy their weapons. Increasingly, these and other strike-survivable technologies blurred the distinction between what would be considered a first-strike and second-strike platform. [Nuclear Chicken]

A scenario is convenient to illustrate the next point: imagine that that U.S.S.R. had struck the United States, its principal allies and overseas bases with a coordinated atomic attack. The President, deep below Washington in his emergency bunker, now faces a dilemma. His country is destroyed, and no amount of nuclear attrition with the Soviets will undo that. He might ask himself, or his advisors, what incentive does the United States have to respond in kind? Indeed, he might conclude that the best response is no response at all, and elect not to inflict further damage to the planet and the citizenry of the U.S.S.R.

This sort of situation raised another issue that was considered during the Cold War – if one of the sides believed that the other would not reciprocate even if it retained the ability to do so, that side might choose to preemptively strike and end the standoff. To this end, both the United States’ intelligence agencies and the Soviet’s KGB expended some effort to convince the other that retaliation was a certainty (in the context of games, these are known as commitment devices). Some narratives of the conflict detail CIA efforts to represent President Nixon as a demented drunk who would be so out of his head that he wouldn’t hesitate to respond. Correspondingly, attempts were made by the Soviets to represent Soviet Secretary-General Brezhnev as a doddering, senile old man, who likewise would retaliate.

Thankfully, the game was never played to conclusion.