Pentagon Wants 'Computer Model' for Irregular Warfare

Can modeling tools help predict (or forecast) the future? Well, that's not quite what the Pentagon wants to do, but it's similar. The goal of "Agent-Based Modeling of Irregular Warfare (ABMIW)" is to use computer models to forecast the consequences of specific actions on, for example, insurgency:

* The agent based model will include the interactions between decisions of individual members of a group and the top down decisions of the group leaders that affect the formation and dissolution of organized social groups.The simulation will include the capability of working out political compromise such as the reallocation of goods or control among interested groups. The agent-based model will incorporate the effects of individual DIMEFIL actions at a lower level of resolution than the strategic/campaign level and work out their implications, so that patterns emerge in the PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure and Information) environment, on the level in which strategic and campaign decisions are made. Lower level rules and strategic level patterns will both be in accordance with social theories agreed upon with the government. The agent based model will include and make use of a database of the infrastructure, political, economic, and social states and relations between agents, so as to work out the implications of actions in a particular instantiation of a PMESII environment, given the rules of relations from micro level and macro level political, social, cultural, psychological, and economic social theories agreed upon with the government. *

The idea is to give a "a plausible outcome" based on the simulations. Additionally, "the data and social theory should support the social models at the individual relation level as well as the level of groups of relations and sequences of relations."

That's a tall order, but it'll be interesting to see what the work yields.