Safety in
Numbers
Mathematics offers
innovative weapons
for fighting terrorism
By Laura Sanders
Mathematicians don’t wear capes and tights. They are not more powerful than a locomotive and they can’t
leap tall buildings in a single bound. But
when it comes to protecting people from
evildoers, these calculating crusaders
could turn out to be super.
On the surface, fighting terrorists with
mathematics sounds absurd. Yet some
mathematicians and computer scientists
are devising equations and algorithms
that show real promise as terrorism
countermeasures. From simple formulas that focus on mathematical properties underlying terrorist behavior to
immense mega-analyses incorporating
billions of information bits, mathematics is becoming an increasingly important weapon in the antiterror arsenal.
“The area has exploded, in terms of
the types of techniques and technolo-
gies,” says computer scientist Kathleen
Carley of Carnegie Mellon University
in Pittsburgh. “There are huge, rapid
advances in this area with, of course,
some very interesting challenges.”
Some researchers, including Carley,
are formulating powerful new algo-
rithms that comb through mountains
of data and uncover hidden “rules” that
govern terrorism behavior. Each tiny
electronic crumb —from among bil-
lions of cell phone calls, web-browsing
records, e-mail messages, credit card
receipts and airline manifests — could
serve as a microclue to help create a
complete picture of a terrorist’s life.
Other researchers, instead of using
mountains of data, begin with a mole-
hill, seeking simple, pared-down math-
ematical formulas that might describe
the optimal arrangement of a secret
terrorist cell, for instance, and provide
hints on how to destroy it.
