Loonshots : How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (9781250185976) by Bahcall Safi

Author:Bahcall, Safi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Macmillan

Map of an online terror network

Johnson’s team identified similar control parameters for the virtual terror cells on the Russian website. The number of clusters was like the density of trees. The rate at which one follower linking into a node inspires another follower to link into a node—the “infectability” of the cause—was the equivalent of the rate at which fire hops from tree to tree, the “virality.”

Extrapolating from the model of fires in a forest, Johnson and his team could then predict when those control parameters would cross a critical threshold and the network would erupt. In other words, when an attack was imminent.

To test the theory, Johnson’s team analyzed not only data from terror attacks but also, working with national authorities and using the same techniques, data from online groups for civil protests in Latin America. They found that signatures of incipient attacks and mass protests appeared weeks in advance. The figure below shows one measure of how the terror network grows exponentially before erupting, a signature that could predict the timing of an attack to within days.

Applying these percolation-style models to virtual terror cells has opened the door not only to new methods of detection and prediction but to new strategies.

First, the results suggest that rather than having to closely monitor millions of individual online behaviors, focusing on the behavior of a small number of cells, which may number in the tens or hundreds, is a better use of time and resources.

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