Cybersecurity For Defense Economists

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cybersecurity plays a role in national security. This study introduces cybersecurity concepts in ways familiar to defense economists and identifies parallel methods of analysis in the fields. The theoretical tools of both fields include microeconomics and game theory. These tools enable analyses of phenomena present in both milieus: public goods, externalities, commons, incentives, interdependent security, platform economics, and inefficiency of decentralized decision making. Additional topics include cyber war, cyberterrorism, deterrence and disinformation in cyberspace, price of anarchy, and economics of cryptography.