ABI, ORCA, and Mapping Adversary Networks

Following up on last month's post about the utility of metadata in manhunting, two interesting recent articles on the methodolgy and applications of social network analysis caught my eye.

First, Gabriel Miller of DefenseNews.com has a report on "Activity-Based Intelligence," or ABI, a methodology that "has primarily been used in the kinds of operations that have defined Iraq and Afghanistan: manhunting and uncovering insurgent networks." Instead of recounting tales of terrorists captured/killed because of this network analysis (i.e. Slate's interesting-but-flawed 2010 series on the role of social network analysis in hunting Saddam Hussein), Miller concentrates on ABI's theoretical/technical aspects. Simply put (or at least as simply as my decidedly non-technical mind can explain it), ABI marries improved technological ability (i.e. the computing necessary to collect, store, and interpret metadata) with the concept of "data neutrality" (i.e. not prioritizing one method of collection over others, and accepting open-information as potentially of equal value to classified information) and improved information sharing between different intelligence and analytical organizations.


Miller further suggests ABI may be applicable to a broader array of problems of interest to the intelligence community, and in a similar vein, the MIT Technology Review reports how the West Point team behind the ORCA (Organizational, Relationship, and Contact Analyzer) software -- invented to conduct social network analysis in Afghanistan -- are working to adapt the technology to help police tackle gang violence in the United States. Specifically, the software allows police analysts to visualize the networks that gang members create, to identify influential members of each gang and to discover subgroups, to assess the probability that an individual may be a member of a particular gang even if they have not admitted membership, and to determine how centralized specific gangs are.

In the end, I'm skeptical as to whether these programs are all that useful for hunting individuals, as targets such as Saddam Hussein, Musab al-Zarqawi, and Osama bin Laden are generally smart enough to cut off contact with all but a few key individuals once they know they are being targeted, and therefore set themselves outside the network they sat atop.

Yet if these programs are of limited utility operationally, they have much greater strategic value, as metadata and social network analysis are undoubtedly useful in developing a clearer picture of broader networks such as terrorist organizations, insurgent networks, and possibly criminal gangs, even to the point of determining key nodes that need to be mitigated/eliminated. The history of strategic manhunts shows that although pursuing an individual leader and forcing him to go to ground renders him strategically ineffective, it also creates space for other actors to step to the fore. From a strategic standpoint, therefore, the successful targeting of an individual is usually less important than the successful targeting of the network that either supports him or will carry on the struggle in his absence.