Network Dismantling: Optimal Attack

Compare random failure vs targeted attack strategies on Barabási-Albert and Erdős-Rényi networks. How fast does the giant component collapse?

80
Build a network to begin.
Network dismantling: NP-hard to find optimal removal sequence.

Scale-free networks are robust to random failure (hubs rare) but fragile to targeted attack — removing top-degree hubs rapidly fragments the network.

Percolation threshold: p_c for BA networks is ≈0 under targeted attack; for random: p_c → 1 − 1/(⟨k²⟩/⟨k⟩ − 1).