The (social) science of warDARPA, U.S. Army looking for social computing technology

Published 6 March 2009

Here is the Pentagonese for social network technology: “new technologies to rapidly create theoretically-informed, data-driven models of complex human, social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that are instantiated in near-realtime simulations”

The social computing phenomenon continues to spread, with news now emerging that Pentagon researchers are commencing work on a military project entitled Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC) —intended to “support leadership decision making at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.”

Lewis Page writes that this is not Facebook-style social computing: it is more like gas dynamics for human beings. The attempt to harness the power of networked social interactions for the benefit of U.S. national security comes from — where else — the ever-intellectually-restless DARPA. The Pentagon researchers seem to use the phrase “social computing” more to indicate a simulation or model than in the online-chumship sense. According to RFI, the agency wants a sort of automated, rigorous science of people-en-masse:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), invites … the development of new technologies to rapidly create theoretically-informed, data-driven models of complex human, social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that are instantiated in near-realtime simulations … technologies of interest include the formalization and semantic representation of social science theories, the semantic integration of disparate types of social science data, techniques for analyzing these data, and efficient computational techniques for rapid data processing.

DARPA anticipates all these technologies would be integrated to develop a flexible, modular social simulation system that integrates sound social science theory with real world data, that facilitates a wide spectrum of military and intelligence applications, and that supports reliable, real-world decisions …

The U.S. Army has also made a similar effort this week, handing out $2 million to research engineers in Arizona. Professor Jerzy Rozenblit of Arizona University and his team will use this cash to develop software with similar Psychohistory-esque capabilities to those of the proposed TASC (see story elsewhere in this issue). “I call it CPR, which in this case stands for conflict prediction and resolution,” says Rozenblit. “Ultimately, these mathematical tools are intended to generate solutions that give us equilibrium, or status quo solutions.” According to the University of Arizona:

It is compelling to imagine what the world look like today had such software been available during historical asymmetric conflicts, such as between the Greeks and Persians at Thermopylae, or the Rebels and British during the Revolutionary War … this project is entering the realm of science fiction … [the software’s] potential spreads far beyond the limits of defense … into the financial world, for example …