Maarten C. Vonk, Anna V. Kononova, Thomas Bäck, Tim Sweijs
arXiv 3 Mar 2026 · cs.MA · publishedThe Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation Applications Methodology Technology (2025) · 1 citations (OpenAlex)
arXiv:2603.03526 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
Western governments have adopted an assortment of counter-hybrid threat measures to defend against hostile actions below the conventional military threshold. The impact of these measures is unclear because of the ambiguity of hybrid threats, their cross-domain nature, and uncertainty about how countermeasures shape adversarial behavior. This paper offers a novel approach to clarifying this impact by unifying previously bifurcating hybrid threat modeling methods through a (multi-agent) influence diagram framework. The model balances the costs of countermeasures, their ability to dissuade the adversary from executing hybrid threats, and their potential to mitigate the impact of hybrid threats. We run 1000 semi-synthetic variants of a real-world-inspired scenario simulating the strategic interaction between attacking agent A and defending agent B over a cyber attack on critical infrastructure to explore the effectiveness of a set of five different counter-hybrid threat measures. Counter-hybrid measures range from strengthening resilience and denial of the adversary's ability to execute a hybrid threat to dissuasion through the threat of punishment. Our analysis primarily evaluates the overarching characteristics of counter-hybrid threat measures. This approach allows us to generalize the effectiveness of these measures and examine parameter impact sensitivity. In addition, we discuss policy relevance and outline future research avenues.
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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Balcaen, Pieter and Bois, Cind Du and Buts, Caroline (2022) A game-theoretic analysis of hybrid threats | 1.000 | 5 | 5 | 100% |
| 2 | Attiah, Afraa and Chatterjee, Mainak and Zou, Cliff C (2018) A game theoretic approach to model cyber attack and defense strategies | 0.928 | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| 3 | Balaban, Mariusz and Mielniczek, Paweł (2018) Hybrid conflict modeling | 0.928 | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| 4 | Sweijs, Tim and Zilincik, Samuel (2021) The essence of cross-domain deterrence self | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 5 | Norgaard, R and Killeen, T (1980) Expected utility and the truncated normal distribution | 0.644 | 3 | 2 | 67% |
| 6 | Daphne Koller and Brian Milch (2003) Multi-agent influence diagrams for representing and solving games | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Arce, Daniel (2023) Cybersecurity for defense economists | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 8 | Howard, Ronald A and Matheson, James E (2005) Influence diagrams | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 9 | Mazarr, Michael J (2021) Understanding Deterrence | 0.585 | 3 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Spiegelhalter, David J and Lauritzen, Steffen L (1990) Sequential updating of conditional probabilities on directed graphical structures | 0.511 | 2 | 2 | 50% |
Showing the top 10 of 57 scored citations.