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Computer Models Find Patterns In Asymmetric Threats
The Narrative Fallacy brings us a story about a project by University of Alabama researchers to develop a database capable of anticipating targets for future guerrilla attacks. Quoting Space War:
"Adversaries the US currently faces in Iraq rely on surprise and apparent randomness to compensate for their lack of organization, technology, and firepower. 'One way to combat these attacks is to identify trends in the attackers' methods, then use those trends to predict their future actions,' said UA-Huntsville researcher Wes Colley. 'Some trends from these attacks show important day-to-day correlations. If we can draw inferences from those correlations, then we may be able to save lives by heightening awareness of possible events or changing the allocation of our security assets to provide more protection.' Researchers reviewed the behavior signatures of terrorists on 12,000 attacks between 2003 and mid-2007 to calculate relative probabilities of future attacks on various target types."
It's all part of game theory. If your enemy doesn't randomize their tactics, then you can take advantage of any statistical bias or pattern. Soon anyone buying a geiger counter, thermal noise diode, or even a lava lamp, will be a candidate for the terrorist watch list.
Shortly after the study began however, the patterns began to match-up to something surprisingly familiar. We have determined that the terrorists are using Windows' random number generator to pick their targets.
Demented But Determined.
Even better -- if you look in television static long enough, you are going to find a pattern. Either they've found some hidden predictor of attacks, or maybe someone needs a course in basic Ramsey theory, which deals with conditions under which order (patterns) must occur even in random noise.
Consider this example (*not* meant as an analogy for the discrete math nazis): you have an infinite sequence of completely random letters over the alphabet. What is the probability of finding "abc" repeated 15 times with a gap of exactly 10 letters between successive repeats? If the stream is indeed completely random, then the probability is non-zero and you will EVENTUALLY (probably) see the "pattern".
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Computer models are only as good as their data: Garbage In, Gospel Out. That's a problem with climate modelling. The climatologists keep tweaking the models until they get what they expect and are then smug because the models "prove" their predictions.
If terrorist activity is truely random, then this thing does not stand a chance. However, terrorists, like most people, likely follow some sort of pattern and if the signature "tell tale signs" can really be detected then perhaps attacks etc can be predicted.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Supposedly one of the better spies (I forget which) always carried a coin in his pocket that he'd flip every few minutes to make random decisions (get to a street corner: turn or go straight? Flip).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
But the terrorists have to conform to reality, there are conditions that must be met for an attack to be carried out. Resources and weaponry must be aquired transferred or built. Willing persons must be in the area or transported there. The application of these resources, which are valuable even if they are a disposable one-shot sort deal often, so we know they will be trying to maximize effect in minimizing risk. There may be vastly more targets than terrorists, but that does not mean that every target could be targeted at any one time. If anything, the research should be a useful tool in helping predict not randomized attacks, but rather supplies, logistics, idelogical supports; the true treasures of information warfare.
Demented But Determined.
And some targets are preferable to others. So empty warehouse X isn't as interesting as a shopping mall. So the randomness must fall with certain ranges of targets that will cause terror. Pattern analysis may help figure out what targets they pick randomly from based upon the above mentioned logistic, supply and idealogical concerns.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell the dancer from the dance." --Corwin Of Amber in CoC
I have a fool-proof method for completely avoiding any future attacks upon our troops in Iraq. Get the fuck out of Iraq. Stop invading countries for the purpose of lining the pockets of defense contractors and protecting the interests of oil tycoons and central bankers. Predictable idiotic responses to my idea: the terrorists will have won! The terrorists have already won a new recruiting and breeding ground, thanks to gw, cheney and rumsfeld. Iran will take over Iraq: let them have it. they're probably too smart to want the trouble though. there will be civil war and genocide. we already have that, pay more attention. we'll destabilize the middle east. we already did that.
...on why the USA is so hated that there have been TWELVE THOUSAND terrorist attacks in three and a half years?
Or is that just crazy defeatist talk?
counterintelligence realized most people do not flip when crossing the street.
No, I'm joking. Seriously though, one of the things the military does in Iraq when looking for the foreign jihadis is they watch for wrong turns off main thoroughfares. It is apparently pretty effective at sorting out people who aren't from around here -- if you know Main Street less well than the Americans, you just might be from out of town!
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.