Shhh! The Logic of Clandestine Operations
This work addresses a theoretical gap in formal logic for modeling covert and clandestine operations, which is incremental as it builds on existing modal logic frameworks.
The paper tackles the problem of formally modeling clandestine operations, where the operation itself is concealed, by proposing a formal semantics and introducing a sound and complete logical system that describes the interplay between distributed knowledge and coalition power.
An operation is called covert if it conceals the identity of the actor; it is called clandestine if the very fact that the operation is conducted is concealed. The paper proposes a formal semantics of clandestine operations and introduces a sound and complete logical system that describes the interplay between the distributed knowledge modality and a modality capturing coalition power to conduct clandestine operations.