{"paper":{"title":"Optimism as a Vulnerability: Deceptive Stackelberg Control of UCB Bandit Followers","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.GT","authors_text":"\\c{S}uayp Talha Kocabay, Kerem Yal\\c{c}{\\i}n, Talha R\\\"uzgar Akku\\c{s}","submitted_at":"2026-06-28T11:22:35Z","abstract_excerpt":"Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms guarantee sublinear regret for agents learning unknown stochastic environments, yet the same principle that makes them statistically efficient (optimism in the face of uncertainty) induces a predictable strategic vulnerability against an omniscient adaptive leader. Classical strong Stackelberg equilibrium (SSE) assumes that the follower immediately best-responds to the leader's committed mixed action; it therefore supplies no mechanism-design prescription for a leader facing a boundedly rational follower who constructs and acts on empirical reward histor"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.05423","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.05423/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"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"}