Where every layer meets a slider.
Live Escalation Simulator
The simulator composes all seven layers into a single interactive surface. Modulate five parameters and observe how escalation risk responds, phase-shifts occur when low attribution confidence meets high automation.
Figures on this layer are illustrative. Latencies, percentages and ratios are model parameters chosen to explore escalation dynamics — not empirical measurements. Markers (≈ illustrative, ▣ structural, § sourced) denote each figure's epistemic status. See methodology for how the model is parameterised.
Load a posture derived from a real case. Parameter values are illustrative estimates that translate each operation's documented character onto the five axes — not measurements.
Self-propagating wiper disguised as ransomware — high interpretive ambiguity and very high tempo (global spread in hours). Public attribution came, but formal consequences lagged by years.
Patient supply-chain espionage: low tempo, low automation, sustained stealth. Ambiguity centred on espionage vs. attack preparation rather than on who was responsible.
Modem wiper timed to a kinetic invasion — high tempo, with unusually coherent allied attribution (EU/US) within weeks of the event.
Never formally acknowledged, leaving attribution contested; autonomous sabotage logic acting on PLCs; a long, patient operation with low tempo but high interpretive ambiguity.
Pre-action certainty about responsible actor.
Share of decision pipeline under autonomous execution.
Contested classification: espionage vs. attack, accident vs. attribution.
Speed at which the adversary's posture demands response.
Confidence in joint attribution and response coordination.
CURRENT POSTURE
attribution_confidence < 40% ∧ automation_level > 70%ambiguity > 60% ∧ tempo > 60%alliance_coherence < 50%automation_level > 80% ∧ tempo > 80%This posture relies on assumptions about adversary restraint that may not hold under tempo pressure.
The simulator is descriptive, not prescriptive. It models the structural interactions between five doctrinal variables that recur across the dataset. Real-world decisions involve additional variables, domestic politics, regime type, prior signaling, technical surprise, that no scalar parameter set can adequately encode.
The escalation-risk score is a transparent, deterministic function of the five parameters. It is an illustrative model, not a calibrated predictor — the coefficients encode a hypothesis about how these variables interact, chosen to make the dynamics legible.
Tier thresholds
- · NOMINAL < 30
- · CONTESTED 30–54
- · ELEVATED 55–74
- · CRITICAL ≥ 75
The central design choice is the interaction term: low attribution confidence and high automation are dangerous chiefly in combination — neither alone drives risk as sharply. The +18 phase-shift encodes the doctrinal claim that crossing both critical thresholds is qualitatively, not just incrementally, worse. Every coefficient is visible above precisely so the model can be argued with. See methodology for the epistemic posture behind the Observatory's models.