Cutting edge of computational behavior modeling

[Guest guest]

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4424

 

Modeling Terrorists

By Harry Goldstein

 

“There are tools where they build a world in a bottle.

They put down every single mosque, river, camel, and

school in, say, Saudi Arabia. Then they have millions

of software agents who each have desires, grievances,

all these different variables. They go about their

little lives and then you ask a question: What if we

build a McDonald’s in Mecca? Does this lead to more

people joining terrorist groups or not?”

 

—Gary Ackerman, Director of the Center for Terrorism

and Intelligence Studies

 

Photo: Bill Cramer/Wonderful Machine

 

Barry Silverman: peers deep into the heart of darkness

to find what makes terrorists tick.

 

Barry Silverman pecks at the keyboard, and suddenly

his computer monitor is showing him the view down a

scary-looking alley in the Bakhara market in

Mogadishu, Somalia. On the big screen, Silverman sees

the market through the eyes of his avatar, a software

soldier. It’s a detailed scene, on a par with what

you’d see in today’s best first-person shooter video

games: in the market’s narrow lanes, militiamen scurry

about, checkered headdresses flapping. It has rained

recently, and the gray masonry walls of buildings

surrounding the market are water stained. The streets

are empty except for some abandoned cars and the

smoldering wreckage of two helicopters. Silverman’s

cybertrooper is part of a virtual squad replaying the

scenario described famously in Mark Bowden’s 1999 best

seller, Black Hawk Down, in which U.S. Army Rangers

attempted a rescue after fighters loyal to warlord

Mohamed Farrah Aidid shot down two U.S. UH-60

choppers.

 

The Ranger that Silverman controls wanders only a few

steps toward the downed helicopters before he

encounters a suicide bomber who blows them both to

bits.

 

Silverman, an electrical and systems engineering

professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in

Philadelphia, restarts the simulation. As his Ranger

avatar scans the scene, Silverman describes the

attributes of each character—or synthetic human

agent—he encounters. He knows them all intimately,

their motives, emotions, and physiologies, as well as

their political, religious, and moral leanings. He

should; he and his group created every last one of

them.

 

Through the Ranger’s gunsight we see a Somali woman

dressed in flowing blue robes and matching head scarf

walking with a militiaman clad in an ankle-length

white garment. Raising his voice above sporadic

gunfire and the crunch of boots, Silverman is

explaining that some of his graduate students spent an

entire semester studying the behavior of Somali women

and their value systems.

 

He points to the screen as the woman allows the man to

hold her in front of him. “This is not scripted,” he

says. “Somali women will act as shields for their

men….She is acting according to her values, her

physiology, her stress, which are tuned to a person in

that culture, and she of her own volition does the

things that you see unfold here.”

 

Silverman, whose sleepy brown eyes and deliberate

speech belie a dry wit, gets the man in the crosshairs

of his Ranger’s gunsight. “He’s already upset, because

we’ve been over there trying to kidnap the whole

leadership of his tribe for a while now. We’re not as

innocent as I’m playing here; I’m already sort of

labeled….” Gunshots ring out, bullet casings clink on

the ground. “They’re looting…and now I’m trying to

chase them away.” Suddenly, chaos. An explosion rocks

the market, followed by a spray of gunfire. “He’s

shooting back at me, and it’s hard for me to aim at

him because he’s got the woman there”—pop, pop, and

then a moan as Silverman drops the militiaman. “Oh,”

he says, surprised by his own marksmanship. “I got

him.”

 

The woman slinks away. “She’s now leaving, because she

has no reason to obey him anymore. He’s dead.”

 

more:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4424