Players and Actors that may apply include: George W. Bush, Washington, Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Mullah Omar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, North Africa, Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb.

Payoffs, goals, interests, and preferences may include: Goals of the U.S. and coalition forces are to have unconditional surrender of terrorists. Interests of aforementioned forces may be matching pennies. The preferences for both sides, U.S. and its coalition forces verses the extremists, are the same. Each player will try to utilize their dominant strategy, and stay away from their dominated strategy. There are also deterrent threats in which pure punishment is conveyed on the behalf of the U.S, and the concept of preventive war is included.

Strategic interaction and choices include: Using the following payoff matrix, the War on Terror is a zero-sum/total conflict game with mixed strategies that are non-strictly determined. There is also the defense, deterrence and compellence game being played with the aggressor being the U.S. and coalition forces, and the defender/deterrer being the extremists. Choices are sequential and open as used in a non-strictly determined game.

Communication and strategic intelligence: Signals of terrorist actions may often get buried in the noise. There is numerous message traffic, and or deliberate false messages, such as with bomb hoaxes. Messages are deliberately put out, but may be decoys and not indicate terrorists’ true intentions. Indices are learned of terrorists’ true intentions.

Credible commitments, threats, or promises: The U.S. and coalition forces, the aggressors, make credible threats based on their dominate strategy, i.e. the use of military firepower. The extremists, the defender, make credible threat based on their dominant strategy, i.e. carrying out horrific acts of terrorism which is asymmetric to the U.S. military firepower.

And lastly, the War on Terror is not one-shot game, but is part of an iterated or repeated game.