The Use of Spies in Strategic Situations: Preliminary Report

The use of spies in combat, international, and industrial con∞ict and competition can be critical in obtaining an advantage in the outcome of such a situation. An understanding of the underlying framework of spying is a valuable tool in making decisions involving the use of spies. This paper studies spying in the context of matrix games. We formulate and model a number of situations involving single or multiple types of spies, spies for one or both sides, and the use of decoy strategies to mislead spies. These all lead to linear programming solutions, which can be solved for fairly large games. We use a simple example throughout to illustrate these situations and their associated solutions.