{"paper":{"title":"The Adversarial Discount -- AI, Signal Correlation, and the Cybersecurity Arms Race","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/","headline":"Full signal cross-correlation neutralizes the attacker's structural advantage from multiplying attack surfaces in AI cybersecurity contests.","cross_cats":["cs.CR","cs.GT"],"primary_cat":"econ.TH","authors_text":"James W. Bono","submitted_at":"2026-05-05T22:43:07Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study a contest-theoretic model of adversarial investment in which an attacker and a defender allocate resources to AI-augmented capabilities across multiple attack surfaces. The attacker's investment operates through two channels: it amplifies offensive potency unconditionally and erodes defensive effectiveness conditionally, generating an adversarial discount that deepens endogenously with the defender's own investment. We derive a closed-form arms race ratio decomposing the relative marginal effectiveness of offensive and defensive investment into six structural primitives and establish "},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"With full cross-correlation, the arms race ratio is independent of the number of attack surfaces: the attacker's structural advantage from surface proliferation is completely neutralized.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The specific functional form through which attacker investment erodes defensive effectiveness conditionally (the adversarial discount) and the assumption that signal cross-correlation can be treated as a controllable structural parameter that reaches full strength.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"In a multi-surface cyber contest model, full signal cross-correlation neutralizes the attacker's advantage from surface proliferation while zero correlation makes per-surface defense effectiveness vanish as surfaces increase.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Full signal cross-correlation neutralizes the attacker's structural advantage from multiplying attack surfaces in AI cybersecurity contests.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"18021e15cde89259d4af7e25bdb6443e2159b3d9f6870fec36a54cec3ae4fee0"},"source":{"id":"2605.04336","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"caa8de66-7f0b-431c-9232-ed8a408fe002","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-08T16:30:46.414332Z","strongest_claim":"With full cross-correlation, the arms race ratio is independent of the number of attack surfaces: the attacker's structural advantage from surface proliferation is completely neutralized.","one_line_summary":"In a multi-surface cyber contest model, full signal cross-correlation neutralizes the attacker's advantage from surface proliferation while zero correlation makes per-surface defense effectiveness vanish as surfaces increase.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The specific functional form through which attacker investment erodes defensive effectiveness conditionally (the adversarial discount) and the assumption that signal cross-correlation can be treated as a controllable structural parameter that reaches full strength.","pith_extraction_headline":"Full signal cross-correlation neutralizes the attacker's structural advantage from multiplying attack surfaces in AI cybersecurity contests."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.04336/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"doi_title_agreement","ran_at":"2026-05-19T23:31:20.515445Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T14:31:21.167665Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"80b85c8aac30c3cceb07f50ed9a20a1e4897d2ba66b1937e14814af00d0ae075"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}