On Wednesday 13 Jul 2011 8:26:52 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote:
Three confirmed blasts so far. Phone lines unreliable, as far as I can
tell. Twitter is going insane (look for the hashtags #MumbaiBlasts
#mumbai #mumbaihelp for news)
Copy-paste:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/uom-uta
Understanding terror attacks in India
Recent advances in computer science at the University of Maryland cast fresh
light on terrorism in India
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Recent advances in computer science at the University of
Maryland's Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics cast fresh light on
terrorism in India, such as yesterday's coordinated attacks in Mumbai. Some
important conclusions from two forthcoming papers, accepted for publication at
the 2011 European Conference on Intelligence Security Informatics and the 2011
Open Source Intelligence Conference in September 2011, suggest that reining in
terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), who carried out the devastating
Mumbai attacks in Nov. 2008, can be done only with concurrent action by the
United States and India and a reduction in US aid to Pakistan.
In order to understand how terrorism from groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba can
be reduced, University of Maryland researchers led by Computer Science
Professor V.S. Subrahmanian developed a number of mathematical models
including stochastic opponent modeling agents and multi-player game theoretic
models. The research team developed studied 5 entities – the US, India, the
Pakistani military (including the Inter Services Intelligence agency), the
Pakistani civilian government (not including the military or ISI), and
Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The researchers looked for Nash equilibria, named after Nobel-prize winning
economist John Nash, whose life was immortalized in the Oscar-winning movie, A
Beautiful Mind. Intuitively, Nash equilibria specify situations where no
entity involved in the game theoretic model can ``do better'' without
upsetting another agency. We did not find a single Nash equilibrium in which
LeT exhibits good behavior in which the US expands financial aid to Pakistan,
said Subrahmanian, who went on to remark that This is consistent with the
recent decision by the Obama administration to cut $800M in military aid to
Pakistan.
Nevertheless, this would not be sufficient to de-fang groups like LeT that are
reportedly funded by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, explained University
of Maryland counter-terrorism analyst Aaron Mannes. The recent court trial in
Chicago of two alleged LeT operatives, David Headley and Tahawwur Rana,
strongly suggests an ISI hand in the deadly Mumbai terrorist attack in Nov.
2008.
In addition to the results about trimming financial aid to Pakistan, we also
found that there was not a single Nash equilibrium in which LeT exhibits good
behavior in which both the US and India did not concurrently take either
covert action against LeT and/or exercise coercive diplomacy toward Pakistan,
said John Dickerson, a University of Maryland scientist who is also earning a
doctorate at Carnegie-Mellon University.
The results do not imply that the US and India need to coordinate actions –
just that the actions need to occur over an overlapping period of time that is
sufficiently long to convince both the Pakistani military and the LeT that
terrorist actions will not pay, said Subrahmanian.
In addition to researching Lashkar-e-Taiba, the University of Maryland team
has also used their data mining algorithms to learn models of the behavior of
other terrorist groups in the Indian sub-continent such as Jaish-e-Mohammed in
Pakistan and the Indian Mujahideen – alleged by some to be responsible for
yesterday's triple bombings in Mumbai that killed over 20 people.
Though it is too early to identify the perpetrators of yesterday's Mumbai
attacks, computational models and algorithms can help decision makers shape
improved counter-terrorism strategies and policies for threat reduction, said
Subrahmanian.
###
V.S. Subrahmanian; J. Dickerson, A. Mannes, A. Sliva, J. Shakarian. University
of Maryland
The University of Maryland Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics LCCD
web site is at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/research/LCCD/ and features a link at
the very top to ongoing work on the LeT terrorist group
(http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/research/LCCD/projects/let.jsp).
Researcher Contacts:
V.S. Subrahmanian
Professor - Computer Science Dept. UMIACS
Director - Center for Digital International Government
Co-Director - Lab for Computational Cultural Dynamics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742.
Tel: (301) 405 6724
Email: v...@cs.umd.edu
URL: www.cs.umd.edu/~vs/
Aaron Wolf Mannes
Researcher/Counter-Terrorism Analyst
CMNS-Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
(301) 405-8639
aman...@umd.edu
