To flip or not to flip, that is the only question that Michael Cohen needs to deal with these days. Every rationale in the book has been proposed to explain why Cohen will — the current one being he’ll keep himself out of prison, be a national hero and maybe hang onto some loose change in a sock — or he won’t because Vladimir Putin will slip polonium in his milkshake. But there’s yet another analysis out there, and a fascinating one at that, and that is game theory. New Yorker:
The most famous game-theory formula was developed in 1950, by two mathematicians, Melvin Dresher and Merrill Flood. But it was only later that another mathematician gave it the catchy name that made it famous: the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The idea is simple: two accused criminals have been arrested and are being interrogated separately. If they both stay silent, they’ll both get a year in jail. But, if one rats out the other, he could get away scot-free while his accomplice would spend three years in jail. The optimal outcome, in terms of total time served, is for both to remain silent. But, as Drescher and Flood posited, there is enormous likelihood that each will rat out the other. There are endless variations of the formula, tweaking the costs and benefits of silence and confession, but the core insight remains: if two people whose interests are mutually dependent on the actions of the other don’t fully trust each other, and don’t have the opportunity to secretly coördinate, they will end up behaving in ways that hurt both of them.
Trust was never a part of the dynamic of Cohen and Trump’s relationship. Cohen was a fawning sycophant to Trump and Trump responded by treating Cohen like a servant and a punching bag. As Roger Stone put it, “Donald went out of his way to treat him like garbage.” Trump wanted Cohen to be his “killer”, his Roy Cohn surrogate. Cohen tried. Unfortunately, he never had Cohn’s brains or cobra-esque instincts, let alone sheer chutzpah, so he never had a chance of being who Trump wanted and needed him to be. Then came the watershed moment of the FBI raid and now the dynamic is totally changed. Staying in Trump’s good graces for the money and prestige that once brought is not the issue; staying out of prison until his children are middle-aged is.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma shows that minor shifts in incentives can have an outsized impact on the choices people make. It also shows that, when two players cannot openly communicate, even the slightest hint of information from one player can have an enormous effect on the other’s choices. In this, Cohen seems to have made what game theorists call a “binding commitment,” a sign that he will pursue the benefits of coöperating against Trump. He has removed options from himself and from the President. It will now be harder for Cohen to revert to his previous state of complete fealty to his former boss. And he has made it more difficult for Trump to pardon him without appearing to mount a cover-up. It seems fairly clear: Cohen is willing to turn against the President. The key question now is what does Cohen know and what can he prove?
Trump’s path is clear now, too. If coöperation is no longer an option, he must destroy Cohen. He must crush this man’s credibility and find some way to so raise the cost of Cohen’s coöperation with Mueller that Cohen will remain silent. What will Trump do if he is convinced that Cohen does have information that could end his Presidency and destroy his family? Trump’s actions against Cohen and Mueller in the weeks ahead will give us clues regarding the President’s guilt.
Trump is a narcissist who has surrounded himself with toadies whom he has then publicly humiliated and discarded and yet they still stood by him long after anybody with self-respect would have left. Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon are in this group, and none of them were looking at prison or total financial ruin.
This is the political equivalent of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” two walk in, one walks out. Which one’s going to be left standing?
