- Two generals planning to attack a city
- Need to coordinate their attack
- Coordinated attack: always succeeds
- Uncoordinated attack: always fails
- Faced with a dilemma if either original message, or its acknowledgment, is lost
Can be applied to, eg, an online transaction
- If shop fulfills order without payment, they lose money
- If shop collects payment without fulfillment, customer is irate
Can be further generalized to the Byzantine generals problem