Are Some Technologies Beyond Regulatory Regimes?

Program Document · Tue Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1429835

Jones, Wendell B. ^[1]; Kusnezov, Dimitri ^[2]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
2. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Washington, DC (United States)

Regulatory frameworks are a common tool in governance to incent and coerce behaviors supporting national or strategic stability. This includes domestic regulations and international agreements. Though regulation is always a challenge, the domain of fast evolving threats, like cyber, are proving much more difficult to control. Many discussions are underway searching for approaches that can provide national security in these domains. We use game theoretic learning models to explore the question of strategic stability with respect to the democratization of certain technologies (such as cyber). We suggest that such many-player games could inherently be chaotic with no corresponding (Nash) equilibria. In the absence of such equilibria, traditional approaches, as measures to achieve levels of overall security, may not be suitable approaches to support strategic stability in these domains. Altogether new paradigms may be needed for these issues. At the very least, regulatory regimes that fail to address the basic nature of the technology domains should not be pursued as a default solution, regardless of success in other domains. In addition, the very chaotic nature of these domains may hold the promise of novel approaches to regulation.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1429835
• Report Number(s): SAND--2017-9186J; 656564
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

chaos
cyber
democratized technologies
game theory
regulatory regimes