http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Friam-Digest-Vol-38-Issue-3-tp522318p522344.html
Interesting conversation but it needs to fall on the appropriate ears. You
From: "Marcus G. Daniels" <
>
> For starters pull an amount of 1% of the scale of the domestic defense
> budget from the larger defense budget. That would be $500 million
> dollars. Plenty to buy the best supercomputers and a team of a few
> dozen project managers, political scientists, intelligence experts, and
> modelers. Take say $100 million to reimburse the CIA and NSA for their
> time on data collection.
> > I'd still have some major doubts about the adequacy of present modeling
> > assumptions. No one seems to have recognized that growth systems are
> > locally invented compounding instabilities to themselves yet, or that
> > natural system networks are mostly linked opportunistically rather than
> > deterministically, or that the variables of our relationship statements
> > generally refer to things that keep changing definition with little
> > notice. I don't think it's an easy problem.
> >
> I agree there is a lot that can't be modeled effectively without heavy
> data collection and lots of focused attention. And some social
> phenomena are probably too fleeting to capture and the precedents too
> silent. But consider elections in this country. Usually it is pretty
> clear how things will go once some exit polls are taken. I'm thinking
> of how to study the demographics of change as a function of military and
> civil violence, occupation, propaganda and relief efforts. Situations
> where known perturbations have been made to the system, and then an
> effort is made to model how those perturbations can be used to predict
> rates and intensity of near and medium term disruptive events.
> Insurgency, say, must have some common properties and unfold in ways
> that are a function of the number of young people prepared to die,
> explosives, technology, and money available and so forth. I imagine
> such models not so much for precise prediction on the ground, but to be
> developed over a long periods to fit abstract scenarios. To help
> planners understand social risk as well as direct tactical risk.
>
> I know some programs like this are already underway, but it's unclear to
> me the degree of funding.
>
> Marcus
>
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