Editing Benevolent Terrorist (section)

== Poisoning The Well ==

A similar thing could be intentionally poisoning the well. If, for instance, an anti-ransomware actor intentionally acted like a bad ransomware actor they could ruin trust in that ecosystem. A plan such a person could have is:

# Successfully infect a target
# Demand a ransom
# Receive the ransom
# Fail to provide the hostage data

Over time, the fact that ransomware actors don't hold up their side of the argument would make victims less likely to pay. This would make it bad practice to "negotiate with terrorists". The cost, of course, is that you have to make a lot of people's lives hell which is what makes it unethical. In a society with rule of law, one could instead mandate things like:

* You're not allowed to pay up
* You're allowed to pay up but you have to pay the anti-ransomware fund an equal amount
* Everyone pays into a ransomware fund every year and every year that it isn't spent, they get their money back

All of these have perverse incentives, which points to the classic problem that designing incentives that reward coordination is hard.