“Most terrorists live close to their selected targets,” a new National Institute of Justice report finds. “According to our analysis, almost half (44 percent) of all terrorists examined lived within 30 miles of their targets.”  (Wired)

Will terrorists go nuclear? That is the essential questioned posed by counterterrorism expert Brian Jenkins in a book of the same title.

Jenkins has written a sobering and critical analysis of this question that spans over his decades of research on the topic. In fact, the book shares the title of a research paper Jenkins wrote over 30 years ago and it is that essay he uses as the entrance point for his observations. The issue of nuclear terrorism is one that has haunted policy makers, enriched movie producers, and fevered American apprehension for 30 years and the strength of Jenkins book is his categorical and tempered analysis of how each of these complex areas play into the nuclear terrorism debate.

Playing the role of mythbuster, Jenkins dives deep to determine the seeding point for a large number of nuclear terrorism memes that have propagated over the past decade. Upon examination, Jenkins finds that some of the memes are just that, organic ideas that developed a life of their own or had strategic sponsorship by individuals who were in a position to benefit from the propagation of the meme. Readers should draw some comfort from the thoughtful analysis and debunking of some of our most terrifying concerns.

In his analysis of terrorist motives, operational concepts and evolution Jenkins dissects the core issues in a way that few terrorism analysts can. This book will speak not only to his peers, but is very accessible to the general audience and it is this audience that Jenkins seems obligated to inform with this book.

That assumption brings us to the final and most essential element of the book, which is Jenkins’ differentiation between “nuclear terrorism” and “nuclear terror”. Nuclear terrorism is the threat that must be addressed by Western democracies through sound counterterrorism and non-proliferation policies. Nuclear terror is the state of perpetual societal fear that is exploited to erode civil liberties and generate apprehension within democracies. Of course, the fundamental question is how much apprehension can we cope with before the fundamental components of our society become unrecognizable.

Jenkins book is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in this essential subject and should be required reading for consumers of popular culture (the TV show 24, for example) that propagate the nuclear terrorism meme, or anyone who finds the concept of nuclear terrorism “terrifying”.

Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? is available for purchase from Amazon.

Steven Aftergood, the Federation of the American Scientists analyst who’s been following the intelligence community for years, wonders how realistic these sorts of scenarios are, really. “This concern is out there. But it has to be viewed in context. It’s the job of intelligence agencies to anticipate threats and counter them. With that orientation, they’re always going to give more weight to a particular scenario than an objective analysis would allow,” he tells Danger Room. “Could terrorists use Second Life? Sure, they can use anything. But is it a significant augmentation? That’s not obvious. It’s a scenario that an intelligence officer is duty-bound to consider. That’s all.” (Wired)

A few days ago, a senior officer at the Pentagon called his intelligence officer into his office. The boss had heard a news report about China while driving to his office and wanted some answers. It wasn’t a tough assignment, given the news coverage, but there was a hitch. “There was plenty of information in the public domain about the topic,” recalls the intelligence officer, a 10-year veteran. “And yet, if there wasn’t some classified information cited in my report, the boss would never believe it was accurate.” (US News)

Chief Jon Greiner recently expanded his staff of crime analysts from one to 11 without hiring a single new officer at the Ogden Police Department in Utah.

Instead, Greiner equipped his existing force of eight lieutenants and two assistant chiefs with new, easy-to-use, Web-based business intelligence tools that enable the police veterans to combine and manipulate data from arrest records, court documents, probation logs, jurisdictional maps and other sources to identify patterns and pinpoint hot spots so they can stop crimes before they happen. (Computer World)

GroupIntel has launched a social network for intelligence professionals.  Join today to collaborate and network with others in the Intelligence Community.  Members from the private, public, and academic sectors are welcome.  Click here to sign-up!

How do terrorist groups end? The evidence since 1968 indicates that terrorist groups rarely cease to exist as a result of winning or losing a military campaign. Rather, most groups end because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they join the political process. This suggests that the United States should pursue a counterterrorism strategy against al Qa’ida that emphasizes policing and intelligence gathering rather than a “war on terrorism” approach that relies heavily on military force. (Rand.org)

Last week we broke the story of the Army’s attempt to design a “first-person thinker” video game for training future generals. Now one senior Army game-designer tells DANGER ROOM that the ground combat service wants to go one step further … and build a “Massive Multiplayer Online Game” (MMOG) where a wide range of Army training could take place. (Wired)

An interesting new Google Maps mashup that pulls in data from a variety of open sources to display disease outbreaks.  Given the dependence on open source, this doesn’t really give you early warning, but works as a nice analysis tool. [Visit Health Map]

Visit our test bed Prediction Market to participate in the GroupIntel predictions.  We are testing new software that actually lets analysts compete against each other in making international security predictions.

The first closed prediction was for U.S. casualties in Iraq for June 2008. The market predicted 30.  The actual number was 31.

Current results for bin Laden captured or killed by January 20, 2009:

Predictify realizes the dream of group intelligence for the general population, much in the way we’d like to harness it for national security and intelligence issues.  Registration is free and users can predict the outcome of a large number of events including pop culture, sports, international issues, etc.  Users can also propose questions to the Predictify userbase and even set a financial purse that will be paid out to those users that correctly predicted the response in the most timely manner.  I won $0.39 predicting that Hillary would drop out in June.  Once you’ve made a prediction, you also get to see some very basic results which are clearly insightful into which way the group is leaning.  If you sponsor a question, I’m assuming you get much more detailed response data and you can also restrict who is allowed to respond based on some simple respondent criteria.

Unfortunately, when I tried to ask a question about bin Laden being killed or captured, the admins flagged it and pulled it due to it dealing with “death”.  So no “death pool” at predictify, but still lots of interesting analysis to be had.

Anyone visiting this site will surely be interested in www.predictify.com

Do you trade music with your pals? Use Facebook to keep in touch with far-away friends? Play World of Warcraft as a girl, when you’re really a boy? Check your e-mail a little too often?

Well, then, you may not be trustworthy enough to become a spy.  [Wired]

The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science just announced that it’s been awarded a $7.5 million grant to work in this fast emerging field of network science, which melds everything from mathematics to sociology.

Network science is increasingly the “hot” area for Pentagon research. Why? Because the Pentagon hopes that if it can understand complex networks, then it can understand terrorist networks, and even predict who will join such a network. (Wired)

One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.

Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues. (Washington Post)

Security and public safety agencies must address a range of current and emerging  threats. These range from conflicts, strategic crime, terrorism, disease and natural hazards, as well as the confluence of any or all occurring at a given point in time. A range of intelligence disciplines and agencies are needed to address these threats and various phases of operations (i.e., pre-, trans-, and post-event). Intelligence
fusion or the production of intelligence to anticipate and understand these complex threats is essential. This paper will provide an overview of the Transaction Analysis Model, Transaction Analysis Cycle, and Intelligence Preparation for Operations as ways to scan the horizon for indicators, monitor evolving threat potentials (i.e., alternative hypotheses), and forecast risk related to novel and emerging threats.
Warning intelligence, strategic foresight, operational net assessment, and the co- production of intelligence for interdisciplinary response will also be discussed.   Analytical Approaches for Sensing Novel and Emerging Threats (PDF Document)

A D.C. privacy group that is curious about the activities of a Virginia domestic intelligence center filed a government sunshine lawsuit Friday, after Virigina’s so-called fusion center rebuffed its requests for documents about what the center was doing.  The Electronic Privacy Information Center’s complaint (.pdf) asks a Virginia judge to force state police to cough up records about meetings with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, especially in regards to discussions about how the center would or would not comply with state open government laws. Virginia state police denied the request, saying the documents were “criminal intelligence data.” (Wired)

They might not build $150-million F-22 stealth fighters, but in other ways insurgents and terrorists are amazingly tech savvy. For one, they’re hip to using grungy, bare-bones websites to spread tactics and ideology across the planet on the cheap, transforming once-isolated local and regional conflicts into genuine threats to global stability. Author John Robb calls this “open-source warfare,” and believes it’s the most important force shaping the 21st century.

If so, we’re screwed. Seven years after the launch of Wikipedia — the user-edited online encyclopedia that brought the “open source” concept to the masses — the U.S. Army is still playing catch-up. The Army’s idea of harnessing the ‘net is to launch isolated websites, put generals in charge and lock everything behind passwords, while banning popular open-source civilian websites. Colonel James Galvin, head of the Army’s “Battle Command Knowledge System,” openly admits that when it comes to the collaborative internet, the bad guys have a “niche advantage.” (Wired)

SANS FLASH
CIA Confirms Cyber Attack Caused Multi-City Power Outage
On Wednesday, in New Orleans, US Central Intelligence Agency senior
analyst Tom Donohue told a gathering of 300 US, UK, Swedish, and Dutch
government officials and engineers and security managers from electric,
water, oil & gas and other critical industry asset owners from all
across North America, that "We have information, from multiple regions
outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed
by extortion demands.  We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of
these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge.  We have
information that cyber attacks have been used to disrupt power equipment
in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the
disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities.  We do not
know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions
through the Internet."

According to Mr. Donohue, the CIA actively and thoroughly considered the
benefits and risks of making this information public, and came down on
the side of disclosure.

Delegates at the meeting shared information on how attackers are eluding
current defenses and on promising practices for mitigating the most
critical vulnerabilities. Link—>

“After several years of public service, the SITE Institute, a non- profit organization, has ceased its operations. Its assets have been sold and the proceeds transferred to other non-profit organizations consistent with the educational and charitable mission of the SITE Institute. Some of the activities formerly conducted by the SITE Institute will now be carried out by the SITE Intelligence Group, a for-profit entity.”

Local intelligence-sharing centers set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have had their anti-terrorism mission diluted by a focus on run-of-the-mill street crime and hazards such as hurricanes, a government report concludes.

Of the 43 ”fusion centers” already established, only two focus exclusively on preventing terrorism, the Government Accountability Office found in a national survey obtained by The Associated Press. Center directors complain they were hampered by lack of guidance from Washington and were flooded by often redundant information from multiple computer systems.

Administration officials defended the centers and said encompassing all sorts of crimes in the intelligence dragnet is the best way to catch terrorists. (NY Times)

I don’t get Insight Magazine so I don’t know the full story that goes along with this teaser:

The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Osama bin Laden has benefited from a secure haven in Pakistan that allows him to plan a major attack on the U.S.

It took all of about an hour after this to hit the Web before various colleagues started to exchange thoughts on the matter, and like a well indoctrinated, NIC-conditioned drone I threw this wrench into the works:

“Define the term ‘bigger’. We’re assuming “bigger” means more spectacular in approach.”

The numerous weaknesses in airline security are well documented. The “security theater” that surrounds most supposed high-value targets/industries/infrastructure means there is less of a chance of a hijacking, but a bomb in the cargo hold – or a gas-filled tanker into city hall - is all too real an option. Hell, ratchet up the poop-to-lettuce ratio and you can send dozens of infidels to the hospital and probably kill a few too.

Bigger defined as more spectacular is an option, but the goal is terrorism, not something suitable for Broadway. As soon as airlines could fly after 9/11 people got on board; when the DC beltway snipers were loose everyone who had to leave their car was OJ Simpson (the Hertz version). There is no reason why the next grand plan might not originate farther down the amazing scale because simple works and if done close to home it hits close to home.

Consider these figures from data I borrowed from the Bookings Institution (PDF):

• IEDs have killed an average of 23 GIs/month since the start of the war.
• October of last year saw a peak of 52 troop deaths via IEDs.

The tactic varies, but generally speaking we’re talking about taking out 3-4 guys at a time in a HMMWV or on a dismounted patrol.

Now, add a little crude homeland-based math:

• A city bus in a major metro area at rush hour might hold 80 people.
• A light rail car might hold more than 100
• A vehicle-borne IED stopped in the middle of a traffic jam might take out a dozen or more people depending on the size of the vehicle and charge.

Coordinated to take place on the same day at the same time (London calling), cells in just the top ten US cities (let’s say a dozen-per – somewhere between the Miami 7 and Toronto 18) it is not inconceivable that a coordinated IED attack could kill significantly more innocents in the US than GIs in Iraq, and three times as many as those killed on 9/11 (80 bus passengers x 12 bombers x 10 cities = 9,600)

Is that “bigger” enough for UBL?

“Tanji, you’re just trying to justify this post.”

Possibly, but if the methodology of our adversary is violence-driven political/religious change, I can’t think of a better way to ride the recent domestic political wave than to focus my attention on the electorate.

Thoughts?

Posted by Mike Tanji

“We provide biologically-inspired entity analytic and prediction solutions that rapidly sort through massive data sets to discover all you need to know about relationships and similarities among entities - people, places and things – much like our own memory works – except Saffron never forgets!”

If you have any interest in this type of emerging technology, I’d recommend you check out the Saffron Technologies web site.  [Saffron Technologies]