The Kaiser,The Tsar,and The Computer: Information Processing in a Crisis ∗

Abstract

Crisiscom is a computer simulation of national decision makers processing information during a crisis. The project has several purposes:

1. It is designed to increase our understanding of the process of deterrence by exploring how far the behavior of political decision makers in crisis can be explained by psychological mechanisms. This is done by comparing the output of the highly simplified computer model based on principles of individual psychology with records of actual political behavior.

2. It is designed to put together a good deal of what we know about the psychology of deterrence into a rigorous and formal system and thus to serve as an integrating device for that body of knowledge.

3. It is designed to be used in human games of the type represented by Bloomfield's DETEX games to provide inputs for teams that cannot be staffed with humans and to represent aspects of the environment that are not played out by the human players.

4. It is designed perhaps ultimately to provide a way of simulating a variety of possible crises. It will be some time before we have enough confidence in the model to use it in such a semi-predictive fashion, but that cannot be ruled out.