The Interdependence Between Homeland Security Efforts of a State and a Terrorist’s Choice of Attack

Abstract

Consider a state that chooses security levels at two sites (Targets A and B), after which a terrorist chooses which site to attack (and potentially a scope of attack).The state values A more highly. If the state knows which target the terrorist values more highly, he will choose a higher level of security at this site. Under complete information, if the terrorist's only choice is which site to attack, the state will set security levels for which the terrorist prefers to attack A over B if and only if the ratio of the value of B to the value of A is greater for the state than for the terrorist. When the state has incomplete information on the terrorist's target values, the optimal security levels may be such that: a target is completely undefended (but attacked with positive probability); the probability of attack is greater at A than at B; and the expected damage from an attack is greater at A than at B. In total, the results reveal that the state's choice of security is heavily influenced by the terrorist's target valuations.

The local geography of transnational terrorism

“… 11. Building up the security of a target can lead terrorists to target less-secure assets. For example, research has found that increasing the security of public infrastructure has inadvertently shifted the focus of terrorist attacks towards private individuals, who are less easily secured from these attacks (Brandt and Sandler, 2010; Mathews and Lowenberg, 2012; Santifort et al, 2013). These findings suggest a negative relation between civil conflict and terrorism, if conflict attracts more security and military forces and so shifts terrorist activity away from the conflict.…”

Strategic and experimental analyses of conflict and terrorism

“…Jiao and Luo (2018) consider a model in which terrorists and state parties engage in a conflict game that features location choices. In its consideration of location choice by a terrorist party, the study is closely related to issues examined previously by Bier et al (2007) and Mathews and Lowenberg (2012). In the model, three geographically differentiated target locations are assumed where the last location is known only by the terrorist party.…”

The Refugee Game: The Relationship between Individual Security Expenditures and Collective Security

“…In 2016, officials at Frontex, EU's border and coast guard agency, admitted that ISIS terrorists are taking advantage of disorganized border checks by posing as migrants to infiltrate Europe. 4 Not surprisingly, as reported by the Pew Research Center, most Europeans fear ISIS terrorist attacks and think that refugees will increase the likelihood of 1 Der Spiegel, 21 Sept., 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/refugee-policy-of-chancellor-merkel-divideseurope-a-1053603.html. terrorist attacks in their countries.…”

“…It follows from Hausken [2] (2006) that the security efforts of each country are interdependent and can force the terrorist group to optimally determine its target; this is known as the substitution effect. (Such substitution effects have also been identified and analyzed in static, incomplete information environments-see, for example, Bier, Oliveros, and Samuelson [3] (2007) and Mathews and Lowenberg [4] (2012)). Presently, this is considered in the second scenario, in which we assume that there is full awareness by all agents.…”