IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aza/csj000/y2025v9i1p88-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The artificial intelligence security zugzwang

Author

Listed:
  • Alevizos, Lampis

    (Head of Cyber Defence, Volvo Group, The Netherlands)

Abstract

In chess, zugzwang describes a scenario where any move worsens the player’s position. Organisations face a similar dilemma right now at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security. AI adoption creates an inevitable paradox: delaying it poses strategic risks, rushing it introduces poorly understood vulnerabilities, and even incremental adoption leads to cascading complexities. In this paper we formalise this challenge as the AI security zugzwang — a phenomenon whereby security leaders must make decisions under conditions of inevitable risk. Grounded in game theory, security economics and organisational decision theory, we characterise AI security zugzwang through three key properties: forced movement, predictable vulnerability creation and temporal pressure. Additionally, we develop a taxonomy to categorise forced-move scenarios across AI adoption, implementation, operational and governance contexts and provide corresponding strategic mitigations. Our framework is supported by a practical decision flowchart, demonstrated through a real-world example of Copilot adoption, thereby showing how security leaders can manage zugzwang positions balancing risk and innovation. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

Suggested Citation

  • Alevizos, Lampis, 2025. "The artificial intelligence security zugzwang," Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 9(1), pages 88-106, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:aza:csj000:y:2025:v:9:i:1:p:88-106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/9649/download/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.

    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/9649/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M15 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - IT Management

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aza:csj000:y:2025:v:9:i:1:p:88-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Henry Stewart Talks (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.