1. Advanced Concepts Group War on Terrorism Activities http:// www.sandia.gov/capabilitites/acg/index.html Presentation to DHS TV/TA Committee Nancy K. Hayden April 23, 2004 SAND2004-2130W Unclassified Unlimited Release Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
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3. Terrorism is a Complex Problem Knowledge Network The key is to better understand the future—plan to change it, and change it Logistics/ Infrastructure Social/ psychological Simulation Multidimensional Games Red, Blue, Green White, Purple MOADB indications & warnings increase hope warn first responders manipulate - deceive - control - dissuade - deter - destroy enhanced collection scenario driven hypothesis smart decision making individuals and groups mitigate Reality
4. Complexity Science Yields New Analysis Paradigms Intrinsic network features transcend domains Santa Fe Institute Workshop April 10-11, 2003 How Complex Adaptive Systems Dynamics are Related to Understanding and Modeling Terrorist Behavior Sandia, Argonne, LANL, CIA, DTRA, MITRE, Navy Cornell, U of Penn, Intel, CMU, Icosystems, USAF, Galisteo, Humana, Alidade, U of Maryland, MIIS, Brookings
5. Systems Thinking: Frame the Problem Predict Analysis Function Timeframe System Complexity Describe Explore Interpret Infer Suggest Modeling approaches depend on what problem is being addressed
13. Threat Awareness and Response Relevant Information Time Event Delayed Detection Response Threshold System Overload Desired Response Curve Today’s Response Curve
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16. Long Term Solutions… Goal: understand the society and shift the distribution in our favor Lovers Lover supporters Undecided Hater supporters Haters Lovers Lover supporters Undecided Hater supporters Haters
Notas do Editor
While globalization is making the world “smaller”, we will continue to live in a world of increasing cultural, economic, and technological divides that have the potential to fuel the fires of hate and resentment against the west. In the studies done since September 11, including our own study within the ACG, one repeatedly sees calls for understanding and addressing “root causes” of terrorism, as well as understanding and protecting against our vulnerabilities. A key part of security will be understand what this means, and find ways to deal with these root causes, drawing on communication and cooperation across these divides. Current administration recognizes these factors and is engaged in proactive research partnerships globally. One such initiative is the US – Mexico Cooperation.
Structural and functional properties of complex systems rest on foundations in mathematics, physics, biology, social sciences, computer science, philosophy, art, technology. Methods developed for artificial intelligence, artificial life, catastrophe theory, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, evolution, systems theory, statistical mechanics can be applied cross-domains using the underlying formalisms, and structure and functional framework of networks. MIT search on complexity: information theory, computer science, physics, manufacturing, applied mathematics, electrical engineering control systems Workshop participants: Crutchfield – evolutionary dynamics, networks, need to define observables for terrorism. Castillo-Sanchez: epidemiological formalism, when applied to ideological transference examined susceptibility, resilience of extreme communities and spread of ideologies with phase transitions dependent upon initial core group size and rate of recruitment; ANL – work on interconnected networks; Eric bonabeau: swarm behaviors; psychology of terrorism; user needs; INTEL – real world problems of cyber security and organizational robustness under malicious attack scenarios. Josh Epstein – Brookings work for spread of bio-agents and inoculation strategies included people interacting with institutions and infrastructures. There were four general themes that could be abstracted from the workshop. The need for increased formalism in areas such as standardized methodologies and approaches, and accessible data sets – aka infrastructure or mechanisms allowing models and simulation tools to be built Issues related to use of the models, including definition of user needs, questions, and type of analysis desired correlated to what different model types can provide Need for emergence of new paradigms – new ways of thinking about organizations (non-linear), cross-disciplinary conversations and novel application of metaphors across fields, cross-agency conversations… Discussions around fundamental understandings of terrorist organizations as complex systems and the nature of terrorism itself
Complexity: Order from disorder – what does system structure look like? Random? Centralized? Growing? Directed? Degree of connectivity? Embedded? Timescale of Processes and decision making: Evolutionary dynamics look at functional role of network and how fitness functions evolve. Robustness can be examined with respect to how systems adapt, evolve in response to environmental perturbations – Self-aware? Here it is key to look at the immediate needs and threats, versus long term. Key will be timeframe of these – punctuated equilibria? Epochal? Diffusive? Function role for analysis (human or machine) -
ACG-sponsored workshop aimed at vetting the KnowNet concept Questions addressed: what needs KnowNet would serve, how the network might be employed by various end users and researchers, how the human and technical aspects of the network might be structured, how the KnowNet might be grown and managed, and how it might be funded Gary Ackerman, MIIS Harry Betz, FBI / NM AG Jeff Cares, Alidade Hsinchun Chen, U of AZ John Cummings, DHS David Hamon, DTRA Merle Lefkoff, LANL Mark Maybury, MITRE Ariel Merari, Peter Levine Greg Treverton, RAND Patricia Medvick, PNNL Jerrold Post, GWU Raghu Ramakrishnan, U of WI Marc Sageman, U of PA Desmond Saunders-Newton, DARPA Marissa Urgo, DOE
I will move through this section quickly, as you will be hearing more about these tools later… These tools use information accessable through the Library and News sections -Info vis tools for summarizing large data sets (VxInsight) Attensity Corp. in Salt Lake City has created what amounts to a high-tech sentence diagrammer, which can examine a document and figure out whether a reference to "Wood," for example, means a person or a place. (Washington Post) Linguistics based. Potential for ontology automation?????? -scenarios and models for representation, communication, and further analysis
Organization by information view (local navigation) is consistent with the general requirement of providing different views for different needs. VxInsight is featured, in this instance, showing the distribution of patents, with the hills showing the highest concentration of data. This particular visualization can be used to determine areas ripe for innovation. We’ve seen community and tools, next- the information….. What are other useful ways to visualize information? Are they cheap? Effective? Understandable?
See “chatter” in signal where there are ambiguous warnings and signals…when event happens, it is often too late for a resopnse – goes into system overload….like emergency room experience if wait too long to go. Need to visit doctor early on to prevent the situation in the first place, and have actionable intermediate steps if headed towards a problem. At present, have too much “chatter: in the system to know that are heading towards a problem. What are the means by which we can increase the quality of the signal? understanding the threat (know what is a significant event within a chain of events and context) understanding our vulnerabilities (contributes to relevance of information)
“With suicide terrorism, the attributional problem is to understand why nonpathological individuals respond to novel situational factors in numbers sufficient for recruiting organizations to implement policies. In the Middle East, perceived contexts in which suicide bombers and supporters express themselves include a collective sense of historical injustice, political subservience, and social humiliation vis-à-vis global powers and allies, as well as countervailing religious hope (supporting online text on radical Islam's historical novelty). Addressing such perceptions does not entail accepting them as simple reality; however, ignoring the causes of these perceptions risks misidentifying causes and solutions for suicide bombing”. Scott Atran, Science, Vol 299, March 7 2003 Beginning in the late 70’s, Mark Granovetter, initiated research into the system dynamics involved in individual and collective behaviors, developing mathematical models for thresholds of collective behaviors, and the complex relationship between these thresholds, other causal factors of behavior, and “emergent norms”, . A key concept in his work was that of “Threshold”: The number or proportion of others who must make one decision before a given actor does so. This threshold point is where net benefits begin to exceed net costs for that particular actor. In the twenty years since,a rich body of research has contributed to this field, including best seller books, such as gladwell’s “”the Tipping Point” , which looks at how major society changes can come about from little things, and Gary Klein’s work on human decision making (Sources of Power), showing the importance of recognizing “leverage points”. Recent work by Samuel Bowles and others at the Santa Fe Institute (winter 2000) has taken this work further to explore the dynamics of trust and exclusion in networks…modeling trust as a best response in a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium…this work explores the idea of parochial networks, which he defines as “sets of agents negated in relatively frequent, non-anonymous interactions structured by high entry and exit costs, but lacking centralized collective decision-making institutions” …”often motivated by racial and ethnic hatred and religious intolerance”…as an optimization problem. These examples are part of a growing body of research work that lays a foundation for examining social dynamics in the language and formalism of complex systems analysis.