Over the weekend popular military futurist and avid buzzword-generator John Robb responded to my critique of Gourley, et al’s recent Nature article on the observed patterns of the magnitude and frequency of insurgent violence. Robb has focused on a single paragraph from my critique for his response; specifically, the fifth paragraph beginning, “The role of the media is central to the decision model proposed by the authors…”
Below is Robb’s response:
Unfortunately, this critique assumes only two decision making cycles (insurgent and counter-insurgent — offense and defense). This is a very serious assumption error. There are many groups involved. It also doesn’t even cross his mind that media coverage is a means of stigmergic communication for cross group communication (despite the clarity of the graphic in the paper — to the left).The second bad assumption is that counter-insurgency responses aren’t covered by the media. In most cases, they are broadcast, in an attempt to dampen public fear and a loss of legitimacy. Second, if these responses are truly secret, there’s very little chance a small group could uncover them until an attack failed. That failure serves as a signal to the other groups via media coverage.
To begin, I wholeheartedly agree in that—as Robb states—”there are many groups involved;” however, as the model in question only accounts for a single “decision cycle” (that of the insurgents’) it is a mischaracterization to claim that I am making “a very serious assumption error.” I am only working off the assumptions present in the model proposed by the authors. Again, the model assumes that insurgents are updating strategies based on information they receive from the media. Even ignoring all of the selection biases present in media reporting and assuming insurgents are using media information in some Bayesian sense (which they undoubtedly are), it ignores the influence of insurgents activity on the media and the role of counter-insurgent activity by the state on both attacks and reporting . More likely, the behavior of all three (insurgents, media and the state) are all bound together, more appropriately modeled as a vector autoregressive process rather than a path dependent cycle.
Moreover, I am puzzled by Robb’s suggestion that media coverage is a form of “stigmergic communication for cross group communication.” This would seem to suggest that insurgents’ decisions to attack are the result of some spontaneous coordination based on the level of media reporting occurring at some given time interval. That is, insurgents are selecting attack targets based on the amount of media coverage it will generate, which there is much evidence to suggest is true, but also have direct control over when, where and how these attacks are being covered. This suggest either a vast conspiracy, or (more likely) ignores the systemic selection bias in how attacks in insurgencies are reported, as insurgents clearly do not have control over that reporting. Instead, insurgents have some prior belief about both how much media coverage an attack will generate and the likely success of an attack, then (along with many other factors) determine targeting; making the suggestion that such stigmergic communication a logical fallacy.
Finally, on the issue of whether COIN policies are covered by the media, I admit a non-practitioner’s perspective. That said, let us assume that the framework suggested by Robb is true, and that in most cases these policies are intentionally divulged by the state and when they are not the media reports that failed attack, which serves are a signal to other groups about the secret COIN policies. Though it is difficult to imagine that the media is omnipresent over the entire set of both successful and failed insurgent attacks, even suspending this disbelief presents a problem. If, in fact, insurgents are informed of successful and failed attacks via the media then insurgents have complete information regarding the strength of the state (e.g., the state has no private information). Through backwards induction; therefore, an insurgent would never attempt an attack given a strong enough state, or would never not attack given a weak enough state. We know; however, that there is a considerable amount of private information for both insurgents and the state, which is why such clean equilibria are never reached.
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well spotted, thanks for the follow up post
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I would go one step further than your critique. Robb seems to assert that open source warfare is the dominant “paradigm” in modern warfare. What does this mean, that weaker foes use alternative means to battle stronger foes (I think this is called guerrilla warfare and has been around for a long time)? That interstate warfare is dead (perhaps Robb should reexamine hot spots around the world, Israel-Gaza, Pakistan India, Colombia-Venezuela….and many of the wars that he speaks of are domestic conflicts with international dimensions)? That weaker foes use new technology to organize and have varied structures…. one of the principal groups that was responsible for alternative tactics and popularizing suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers, was a hierarchical organization. Robb should try reading Weinstein’s Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, ( http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Rebellion-Insurgent-Cambridge-Comparative/dp/0521677971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261500882&sr=8-1 ) for a careful, laid out analysis of rebel groups and organization. It would be one thing if Robb was reinventing the wheel and making poorly grounded insights and no one was listening. However, it is disconcerting that he seems to have gained a following in the defense and policy community. Robb rightly points out the need for academics “out of touch” with the defense policy community, to become more relevant. His musings and buzzword blog are however, a poor substitute for intellectually rigorous observation.
Gourley et al. also are guilty of reinventing the wheel and an egregious omission of a vast literature in Quantitative International Relations. Cross discipline collaboration and insights (physics to political science in this case) can prove to be quite fruitful in eliminating discipline groupthink if the authors have done their homework. However, Gourley et al. ignore the work of Macartan Humprhreys, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Eric Dickson, Jason Lyall, Stathis Kalyvas, and Jeremy Weinstein among others who have studied insurgent organizations and violence in quantitative rigorous way. Finally, they commit the statistical sin of ecological fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy )…they have aggregate data on casualty counts and claim that this provides insight into the micro-level behavior of insurgents. No! Any number of models could explain the outcome of their data (including their own). To assert that their model uniquely fits their data is misleading, especially given the silly assumptions of their model….no incumbent government or force affecting group organization. While Gourley et al. have gotten a lot of press for their Nature article, any serious academic and practitioner interested in understanding the dynamics of insurgent violence will be underwhelmed by their methods and results.
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Excellent rebuttal, Drew. It’ll be interesting to see if Robb responds to your post. Let us know if this conversation continues.
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Drew—to carry the conversation further John’s comment on stigmergy might in fact be true.
Stigmergy is a mechanism of spontaneous, indirect coordination between agents or actions, where the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a subsequent action, by the same or a different agent. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, apparently intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even communication between the agents. As such it supports efficient collaboration between extremely simple agents, who lack any memory, intelligence or even awareness of each other.
By tying the above definition to the Soviet made RKG-3 anti-tank grenade-John’s use of the term is correct. AQI/QJBR initially released two battle videos showning their successful use of the grenade attack on US forces stating via the media that they were still in the fight and being successful. Then after a month or so they released a long video praising their new thermite battalions, showing the grenade, and how to use it. THEN no further videos from the AQI/QJBR concerning the grenade. THEN battle video releases started showing up on the internet from the Islamic Army of Iraq and Ansar al Sunnah insurgent groups depicting their successful use of the grenade against US forces.
The weapon has now become the weapon of choice by all main Sunni insurgent groups and I am patiently waiting for the first usage of the grenade in Afghanistan to show up on a battle video released to the internet.
The Taliban are also following the media releases out of Iraq—they are currently in the same type of suicide attack mode in the cities that the Sunni insurgency went through and the next phase will be the use of the RKG-3 as the preferred method of attack in the cities. Knowledge transfer/management via the internet.
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