Human Terrain Preparation

The Dark Side
by Sharon Weinberger
Discover
October 2007

The below comes right out of the article.

"In fact, the Pentagon is now extending its desire to manage information all the way to a soldier's brain, where DARPA and other research agencies are seeking to exploit neuroscience in pursuit of better battlefield technology. This year DARPA started a project called Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System - more catchily [sic] dubbed Luke's Binoculers (a reference to Luke Skywalker from Star Wars) that combines advanced optics with an EEG system that monitors brain wave activity suggest that the brain has subconsciously detected a threat ... anticipates field testing a prototype in 2010. Luke's Binoculars is only one step into the world of neuroscience."
Mr. Cheney is big fan of a Star Wars project.

Sharon goes on to state,
"In an interview, William Schneider, the chairman of the Defense Science Board, a panal that advises the Pentagon's senior leadership , says that neuroscience can offer a window into the minds of terrorists. "By being able to collect and process a lot of information about individuals that can be leveraged with understanding how the brain operates, there may be things we can do that had not heretofore been possible." This would include being better able to predict where an individual might be found or to anticipate his behavior."

She continues,
"Schneider's suggestion is one part of a broader report by the Defense Science Board on 21st-century "strategic technology vectors. Released earlier this year, the report highlighted "human terrain preparation" as one of the key areas for Pentagon science and technology. This new piece of jargon,... "human terrain" to describe the interaction of culture, groups, and people that can, for example, lead to military forces being treated either as liberators or as unwelcome intruders."

"Schneider says these kind of technologies are diverse, from sensors that monitor the activity of people to software that would guide the actions of military commanders in the field by taking social and psychological factors into account. The Pentagon is funding social scientists to develop a tool kit that helps combat teams understand the cultural context in which they must operate."

She says,
"According to Rear Admiral Bill Landay, who heads the Office of Naval Research,... We're putting a lot of emphasis in decision tools that focus on patterns and pattern differentiation, anomalies in behavior of people, the behavior of crowds, the behavior of organizations." She said there were projects in the Vietnam War based on social sciences and behavior with the most infamous being Project: Camelot, focused on preventing insurgency in Latin America,..."

Further stating,
"The current research has resurrected some of this social science work. DARPA's Integrated Crisis Early Warning System is nearly identical - at least in name - to a DARPA project of some 30 years ago that sought to forecast political instability. The current work describes 'state-of-the-art computational modeling capabilities that can monitor, assess, and forecast, in near real time, a variety of phenomenon associated with country instability.' The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has also joined in this pursuit, with research focused on tracking WMD networks. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Homeland Security have all launched programs aimed at predicting group behavior. Starnes Walker summed up the goal in 2005, for a detector that could scan for evil intent. A memoir by one Pentagon official closely linked to the Vietnam-era cultural research concluded said that the military should stop funding social science. His warning has been forgotten: Human terrain research is growing, with the Pentagon estimating that in the 2006 and 2007 financial years, $74 million was allocated in the area."

Lastly, she says,
"Longtime national security analyst William M. Arkin says "These technologies are interesting and worthy of pursuit, but my guess is that they are poor replacement for examining why it is that terrorism exists in the first place." He points to the billions of dollars being poured into developing a biometric database in Iraq that will be used to identify and track individuals. "They think they can make a database of the entire planet, and thereby that will set us free. 9/11 was successful because it was a diabolical plot using the most conventional of weapons. It was not successful because of some technology they acquired."
[wonder if thats the rocket that hit the Pentagon and not Flight 77]
Furthermore,
"Human terrain research goes to the heart of the question of whether defense research is grounded in good science or good policy. "I'm going to be perfectly candid on this one," says Mark Lewis the Air Force's chief scientist, "I think its something we should be looking at. I'm also maintaining a healthy skepticism." Ironically, Lewis's skepticism is inspired in part by the science fiction author, Isaac Asimov of Foundation novels. "there's two important lesson's I think Asimov got right. First, the technology failed when a dictator arose, creating a "wild card that throws all the predictions off. And second, in the end it turns out (the forecasters) were cheating. They hadn't actually predicted it all in the past, they were broadcasting it live and updating their predictions."
Lewis shrugs. "We couldn't figure out if Ohio was going to go Democratic or Republican, and that's the society we're supposed to understand?"