Nuclear Insecurity as a Commodity

A recent project at the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI) at Texas A&MUniversity is focused on developing a methodology to quantify state-level cooperation in securingnuclear materials. Quantification is accomplished through economic utility theory between twostates and their respective financial investments in securing nuclear material and materialinterdiction at the border (to thwart potential attacks using the other state’s material). By definingthe states’ strategies and computing their respective payoffs, results can be used to convey thepotential benefit of bilateral engagement (especially regarding nuclear security). The methodologybeing developed uses plausible input data for each state in a two-state model and an iterativecomputation process to determine each state’s best strategies in response to the other. The twostatemodels being used exhibit characteristics similar to existing bilateral nuclear security regimessuch as the US-Russian Material Protection, Control, and Accounting program. Replicatinghistorical cases of bilateral nuclear security arrangements, some results convey nuclear insecurityas a potentially profitable commodity that can be bargained with to increase a state’s utility. Thispaper will include a topical introduction to the developed methodology which is based oncooperative game theory as well as specific models to show how nuclear insecurity is used as thebargaining chip for collaboration between states. This work is part of a larger effort conducted atNSSPI in developing a game-theoretic approach to assessing influence in bilateral nuclear securityregimes between nuclearly asymmetrical states.