Slashdot Log In
Computer Models Find Patterns In Asymmetric Threats
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Feb 14, 2008 07:31 PM
from the pseudo-random-nutcase-generator dept.
from the pseudo-random-nutcase-generator dept.
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."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or more precisely, predict the mostly-unpredictable. Just about any activity involving humans, even if it seems utterly random at first glance, will have underlying patterns which emerge once one analyzes the data.
Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But this is Slashdot; it's useless to try rebut the groupthink (read: prejudice) with facts.
A step up. (Score:3, Insightful)
A step down more like (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:A step down more like (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate science is no different. What is different is that there are consequences for our actions on earth that matter depending on the outcome of the model. Because there are huge stakes involved, people tend to forms groups at the poles of opinion. You have companies with large stakes in suggesting that climate change is not man made paying for climate research by scientists who feel similarly. You have news organizations and political organizations (who know shit about science) taking the barest of abstracts from a study and runnign with it. You have sceince dumbed down by both sides in order to explain it to voters and policymakers. this sort of thing doesn't happen that much in some branches of science.
Evolutionary biology, genetics, labor economics, sociology, antropology. Those are a short list of disciplines whose conclusions draw people into camps. They also happen to be the same disciplines (not an exclusive list) that people accuse of unscientific practice (and then in doing so, describe the scientific method perfectly, as you have done). That those disciplines and only those disciplines would suffer from a failure to understand the scientific model alone while scores of other disciplines would execute that model perfectly strains credulity.
Parent
Re:A step down more like (Score:4, Insightful)
Prediction: The earth is warming due to man made effects.
Test: Take given data (earth warming) and attempt to sort out all possible other effects.
These models are EXCEEDINGLY complicated. The early ones were pretty damn complicated but were basic by comparison. Models suggested for years that climate change was man made without a doubt. Later, models were revised with the addition of new data and new processes. this means that NEW information was found that NO ONE had before, like the actual oxygen content in ice cores. Like the feedback nature of ocean currents. Those were taken into account and the model changed. We became less sure of the impact of man in the scheme. As the models grew more sophisicated the confidence intervals got better and more information was added. We are now MUCH, MUCH more sure that climate change is real, man made and will impact us in a significant fashion.
All we have left are people like you. People who claim that their rejection of climate change is based on some scientific principle, like they are galileo before the church. I've got news for you. It's isn't some religious theocracy. It isn't an unscientific crusade. It is just science that leads to an unfortunate conclusion. We don't WANT to have this conclusion. We don't WANT to come to the conclusion that life will get demonstrably worse in the next 100 years rather than better. We don't WANT to live on a warming planet. These are just conclusions from the model and evidenced by the world around us.
I have no knowledge of why you don't get this or don't want to get this. All I can say is I'm sorry for you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
game theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Or get change (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Parent
He was eventually nabbed when... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Parent
Re:game theory (Score:4, Insightful)
what the model predicts?" Now that it's public knowledge that we are using this kind of analysis, wouldn't it be useless?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A Deadly Lottery (Score:5, Funny)
Common Sense at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
"This study considered two aspects of each attack: the target of the attack, and the time of the attack. Using careful statistical techniques, the team identified correlations between attacks on various target types as a function of time. For instance, if there were an attack on a government target, that somewhat increased the chance of an attack on a police target over the next several days."
Sounds pretty strait forward. If you have a brazen attack against, say, a base, you can expect a higher risk of attacks on other assets. Isn't that why after the 911 attacks there were Combat Air Patrol flights over every major city for days. This is just common sense...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, there's also a chance that their work will end up not being useful. That's why it's called research.
The final solution (Score:2)
They attack the weak point for massive damage!
Data Mining Principles Applied, Eigenbehaviors (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't whether it is an optimal strategy, but whether these tools improve materially the effectiveness of intelligence. "Discovery" AI/Expert systems were finding new materials processes during the 1980s.
Oh ye of little faith. Still, trust in god but lock your car.
Basis for correlation (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, the best way to reduce these types of attacks is to avoid invading other countries without (at least) the invitation of the citizens. Compare, for example, UN peacekeeping forces in Kosovo who are not subject to constant random attacks precisely because the general populace wanted them there.
America needs to learn to address the underlying disease, not the symptoms. Likewise terrorism: remove the underlying motivation (hint: it's not "terrorists hate freedom") and resolve the problem.
another shameful abuse of technology (Score:3, Insightful)
No kidding. (Score:4, Insightful)
All I can say about this conflict is that nobody I give a shit about was stupid enough to believe the government's lies and enlist to fight in Iraq. My deepest condolences for those who enlisted pre-2003 to defend their nation...these men and women are being misused.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Chinese came and took over Hawaii, you can bet hard money that citizens wouldn't be setting off bombs in supermarkets or strapping explosives to disabled people to use as weaponry. The disabled people that they strap weapons to aren't fighting "the noble fight", they're people who don't know the difference because of mental disability. Would we use the full force of our military to stop such an attack? Of cours
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do like what you did there though. You separated attacks on US troops by roadside bombs and suicide bombs on Iraqi civilians as if they weren't being orchestrated by the same people. Reality check - they are.
The quote I was replying to:
"I love the terrorist-fearing pant-loads crying that the terrorists use women and children to fight off the people who have invaded and occupied their country. Do they really think American women and children would
Save Lives? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about saving lives by not using air-strikes in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods? It doesn't take a computer model to tell you that bombing towns and cities is going to kill civilians and create a lot of very angry (and probably armed) people.
Re:Save Lives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, unfortunately the guys placing the artillery are not necessarily the ones who live there, and the ones who do live there will get a gun pointed at their family if they ask for it to be moved.
Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed.
Parent
that's flawed - here's better methodology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't you hear President Bush explain how they'd follow us home if we left Iraq? There's only one guy causing all this conflict. If he's there, he can't be here. But if he doesn't need to be there, he can easily move his family here and cause all sorts of trouble.
Al Qaeda is Platinum on American Airlines, he actually is a million miler from way back, which means free upgrades for life,
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you really need a refresher? (Score:3, Insightful)
*sigh*
I hate it when people trivialize the reason the US went into Iraq.
It's a *very* complex, very powerful function of time. However, it can be simply summarized thusly:
Begin: Terrorists are hiding out in Iraq, and Iraq had something to do with 9/11
Month 1: Weapons of
How about a study (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is that just crazy defeatist talk?
What a pantload. (Score:3, Insightful)
But then there are other forms of terrorism, such as flying a B2 filled to the gunnels with high explosive munitions that rain down on the homes and hovels of innocent civilians.
Americans like to bark about terrorism as in the form taken by small groups of murderous assholes, frequently on a suicide mission. And they bark louder when a state gets involved in support of such efforts. But they refuse to take responsibility (much less blame) when they themselves act as State Sponsored and funded terrorists by bombing the living fuck out of innocent civilians. Whether it's a team of suicide bombers or a team of bomber flight crew, the results are the same: mass death of innocent civilians.
And don't go cracking a pantload over how the Iraqis attacked your freedom. WHEN did the boat filled with Iraqi soldiers float to the USA and attack your freedom? What day was that? I sure would like to know because I was taking a vacation in this lovely little place called REALITY. The USA is a terrorist nation. Its unwarranted and unwanted and utterly idiotic invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people there. Whether it is death strapped to some delusional team of assholes chanting ALLAH, or some cynical assholes flying at 12,000m dropping ordnance all over a city and thinking it's a job well done, the results are the same: dead civilians at the hands of a team of assholes.
Here's a way to predict terrorists attacks: check the flying sortie records of the US Air Force.
RS
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Invading a country illegally is NOT TERRORISM. It is a war crime, and completely unjustifiable. Did you read that last sentence? It is a horrid war crime. Bush and cronies should be thrown in jail.
Using military techniques to cause terror to combatants, such as using a flash bang/stun grenades, dropping bombs, dropping leaflets, and killing enemy soldiers in spectacular fashion is not terrorism.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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".
Parent
Re:Terrible idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, that's why you have test sets to determine if the models the system learns from the data are useful or not. I think it's safe to assume that the scientists working on this are familiar with the basics of learning theory and modeling.
Parent
Re:Terrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Terrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Terrible idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a wild notion: they're doing what the US government usually does and calling any insurgent attack a "terrorist attack". Which is why this research is being carried out for the DoD instead of the Department of Homeland Security.
Parent
Re:Terrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The second big pattern is "why do they keep attacking"? If the US instigators of this war had listened to their more competent staff, who told them it's a huge mess and they needed 3 times the number of troops and not to use so many mercenaries (who are a massive problem in Iraq as they've been in other "peacekeeping" operatons), we'd have had a much cleaner recovery after the invasion and wouldn't have these issues.
But that's an even bigger picture pattern, and these research studies can do nothing about it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Significance only makes sense when the underlying distribution is known, such as the random sequence I listed as an example. When you have no clue what the underlying distribution is, and can NOT safely assume near-normality because of the central limit theorem, all bets are off. I just don't buy that the distribution of terrorist attacks is normal or even near-normal, not without some hard evidence.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Terrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Because.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Because.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The attacks are surprises and random, how are they going to try to extrapolate patterns with computers?
The article doesn't refer to the attacks as random, but says that they rely on "apparent randomness". Nothing humans do is ever truly random, there are always patterns. They aren't trying to predict when and where and attack will happen, only what target are more likely to be hit. From the article:
For instance, if there were an attack on a government target, that somewhat increased the chance of an attack on a police target over the next several days. Armed with this knowledge, commanders could allocate greater than usual resources to protect police assets more carefully for several days after an attack on a government target.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, when choosing random locations on a map, people tend to scatter the locations across it, leaving a somewhat similar distance between each one of them.
Real randomness creates clusters on the map, causing some of the chosen locations to end up next to each other.
On the other hand, maybe I've just been watching too much "numb3rs"...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)