House Set to Grill Military on 'Human Terrain,' Social Network War

The House is set in a few minutes to start hearings one of the hottest -- and most contentious -- topics in Pentagon research today.

Every arm of the Pentagon's vast research complex is scrambling to figure out how to turn social and cultural networks into military advantage. Social scientists are being embedded in combat brigades, to explore Iraq and Afghanistan's "human terrain." Computer labs back at home are trying to model foreign cultures like the weather, and predict the next epicenter of unrest. But all of these projects are loaded with controversy. One of the biggest academic groups in social science has condemned with Human Terrain System program as unethical; prominent researchers and officers think the prediction project is pie-in-the-sky, at best.

Even leading backers of these programs admit they will be beyond tough to pull off. Dr. André van Tilborg, a deputy undersecretary of Defense for science and technology, is set to tell a joint session of the Armed Services Committee's terrorism panel and the Science Committee's research subcommittee, "the questions that the social and behavioral sciences try to answer are in some ways harder and more difficult than the physical sciences."

*It is arguably easier to predict the motion of a single neutrino or muon than to predict how a video posted on YouTube can propagate through a social network and the on-line media to reshape a national debate and change policy. It is easier to identify the existence of a new planet by studying wavelength shifts of distant stars than it is to predict which individual in a society will turn from a political activist to a violent extremist. *

Also due to testify is Colonel Martin Schweitzer, whose 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division became the first to use a Human Terrain team (here's his prepared testimony); Dr. Mark Weiss who heads up behavioral and cognitive science programs for the National Science Foundation (testimony

); and Prof. David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization (testimony). The hearings will be webcast here. More excerpts from Tilborg's prepared statement to the panel, after the jump.

[Photo: Johan Spanner / Newsweek]

*The need for improved cultural awareness training was identified in the early phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was realized that the general purpose forces needed some of the same cultural awareness competency that our Special Operations
Forces have traditionally maintained. Military operations in complex, multicultural environments require more than just being culturally sensitive to the dos and don’ts of a society. They require an awareness and knowledge that can be applied to improve interactions and shape the outcome of the interactions. Each of the Services have established cultural awareness training centers that are developing content, sharing this content, and have begun training their personnel on the specific knowledge necessary to support their military missions. In addition, cultural training is ongoing at the Service
Academies, and is provided to forces prior to deployment. The cultural awareness training centers have been developing their content from the extensive on-the-ground experiences of the Soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq, combined with the relatively well known academic knowledge of Iraq’s religious and sectarian history. Providing the same level of ‘understanding’ and training for data-poor, less studied socio-cultural environments, such as the mountainous tribal regions of Afghanistan or the multicultural regions of Indonesia, for example, is much more difficult. The Army Research Institute is funding research into understanding the foundations of culture skills and competencies that can be used across deployments and geographic assignments. Also, the Department has begun to develop methods and processes to collect and examine what data are relevant and sufficient to understand a culture, relative to our military missions. *

*The
Department is also developing systems that can handle this type of data/models to help plan for non-kinetic operations and to measure the intended and unintended outcomes of these operations. The ultimate goal is to achieve an acceptable baseline for cultural competency across our forces. The first generation capabilities in this area are being derived from the best academic and professional subject matter experts providing schoolhouse content. An example of this type of work is the Combating Terrorism
Technology Support Office work to develop training support packages that focus on the operational and tactical applications of cultural awareness, with a specific focus on
Indonesia. The next generation capability will likely be computer-mediated training and mission rehearsal in relevant venues. One example of this work is ongoing efforts as part of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program that is developing a system that will train how to read Middle Eastern non-verbal cues and develop an understanding of what those cues say about a person’s intentions. Another example is the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Iraqi Language and Culture Training
System which uses interactive computer ‘avatars’ to teach soldiers basic language and cultural understanding. The third generation capability will be embedded within more immersive, dynamic environments. Work in the area of human behavior representation and agent-based modeling would support this type of capability. *

*Last year, the DDR&E initiated a program to support Human Social, Culture and
Behavior (HSCB) Modeling that can help the Department to understand social and cultural “terrains” as well as the complicated dimensions of human behavior that can lead to peaceful and/or violent intent. The HSCB is focused on developing the required scientific base and will field mature technologies that support human terrain understanding and forecasting across a range of mission areas and geographic regions. It will focus on identified technical gaps in our ability to plan and execute military operations in which socio-cultural issues are a dominant factor. The HSCB effort will work on filling in the gaps in data collection/infrastructure and knowledge management, and then developing the models to forecast societal and cultural behaviors. In addition to delivering software modules that are fully integrated into DoD command and control systems, the HSCB effort will help to create the infrastructure (simulations and content, which includes data, models, and theories) to support tactical through strategic training, mission rehearsal and experimentation using valid cultural entities and models. The output from the HSCB program will improve the Department’s ability to plan for stability, security, transition, and reconstruction operations in complex environments.
These improvements will occur at the tactical, operational and strategic level, and will enhance the Department’s coordination with other agencies (e.g., Department of State) in their efforts to stabilize ‘hot spots’ around the world. The program has just completed its initial review of proposals from its first Broad Agency Announcement, and contract awards will be pending. *

ALSO:

* Human Terrain's 'Catch-22'

*

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