Defense Tech: The Human Terrain Project


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

The Human Terrain Project

Had an interesting conversation this morning with the chief of counter terrorism for the State Department, Amb. Dell Dailey. It was part of the Defense Writers Group breakfasts that I go to periodically and I wanted to point out something that might interest you all.

Asked a question about surveillance technologies, aviation assets and other gadgets his office might need to more effectively counter terrorist movements, Dailey had an interesting answer. He said the department always needs more aircraft, but the surveillance tech is already good enough for his needs. Instead, he needs a comprehensive map of the human terrain he'll encounter.

"During the Cold War we mapped the floor of the oceans for our submarines to move around and not bump into underwater mountains. We ought to take that same mentality and apply it to the humans that may end up coming after us that are terrorists."

Basically Dailey is asking for an extremely detailed, layered map of tribes, religions, cultures, races, politics, history and languages for key areas and their interaction with the geography.

"Human preparation of the environment rather than physical preparation of the environment... We need to map the human terrain in those sensitive areas as thoroughly as we mapped the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. That will allow us in the future not to go into a post-9/11 scratching our heads 'should we go kinetic, should we go non-kinetic? Should we go after this tribe or should we go after that tribe?' It allows us to have a foundation in place already to move for our government actions. I don't see that right now."

Dailey said several think tanks, universities and some offices within the US Gov. are working on some kind of variation of his human terrain map, but there lacks the "Manhattan Project mentality" that pushed the sea floor mapping during the Cold War.

-- Christian

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Posted by: luxury watch at April 19, 2009 09:40 PM

AHOY, I say people in general are creatures of habit, and much easier to track/map than one might think and the odd ones would be the targeted ones, i.e. did not deposit a check today as usual would be noted or dose not have a bank account etc. However I agree that ultimately were talking lets say think "Quantum Leap" TV show remember that one, the guy with the invisible friend and his computer "squigy" I believe. And since that aired a decade ago I say those in charge are way ahead of the curve. Big brother is all grown up.

Posted by: Newjarheaddean at February 7, 2009 12:03 PM

AHOY, we don't need new terms every time someone comes up with some Idea. it's call demographics and its based on various census.

Posted by: Newjarheaddean at January 10, 2009 08:38 PM

I'm a little worried as an anthropologist, because what I've seen from the HTS Project in the past has been overly simplistic descriptions of highly complex societal normals, mindsets, and epistemological differences.

I hope that Dailey gets the level of detail that he requires. Anything else, even little mistakes have the potential to cause extreme misunderstanding.

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Posted by: Sunny Deng at January 7, 2009 05:52 AM

Yes must have for counter terrorisim
Love the idea.
Have enough IT & AI power to achieve in the DoD alone aside colleges & Univs.
Neat.
Low cost to fund.
Doable.
EZ do.

Posted by: stephen russell at January 6, 2009 10:51 PM

Not for nothing, but the Army's been working on something like this for the "Human Terrain System". The software is called MAP-HT, and it's supposed to be some sort of overlay of ethnographic information on an actual terrain map.

FWIW, there's a screenshot here:

http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/29/htt_ui2.jpg

By some accounts, the project is in disarray.

I can see the sense in putting an ethnographic overlay on an actual terrain map. If an observer doesn't have the linguistic or cultural background to understand an AO, having some information is better than none. But geographical terrain is pretty static, and definite; it's determined by physics, math and weather. "Human terrain" is not; it's often fuzzy, at best. Dated or otherwise inaccurate information could do as much harm as good.

In theory you could manage a project like this by crowdsourcing -- for example, a wiki approach. Changes in information and/or debate over its accuracy could tell you as much as the entry itself. Or you could go dual track -- one database maintained by restricted or filtered users, one open source. If the two match up, you're probably OK. If they don't, CYA.

Any way you slice it, an effort like this looks like a potential clusterfuck -- or at least, a drunkard's walk to something useful. Doing it for a discrete AO, like one province in Iraq or Afghanistan, may be manageable, but doing it for the whole world, all the time? That's a big, complicated job.

A "Manhattan Project" like effort might work, but building the A-bomb was a discrete goal, with relatively fixed scientific constraints. This would be a more open ended project, dealing with fuzzy data.

As a taxpayer, I'd hope the USG could manage anthropology better than it's regulated the economy, or run weapons programs. Apart from that faint hope, I'm a little skeptical.

Posted by: demophilus at January 6, 2009 03:43 PM

We need to create surveillance balloons to loiter in areas, or schedule Globalhawks to scan terrain on a daily basis. If we layer on infrared data we can compare and overlay images taken the day, hour, minute before and figure out where the movements were. All of this needs to be automated. If we can get there. We can find all the roadside bombs before they find us. We can also use ground penetrating radar to look for metals and geo sensing equipment to look for explosive elements to better map the deadly stuff, mine fields and such. This same equipment is already in use on satellites and is used to look for mineral deposits and such.

Why aren’t we there yet? What is taking so long?

Posted by: Ryan at January 6, 2009 03:03 PM

or he could get a general view by reading Salzman's "Culture and Conflict"

Posted by: Richard at January 6, 2009 01:54 PM

Sounds brilliant. Not only would you need to crack open history books, you'd probably have to divide each section into demographics, and if a database was built, it'd probably provide more than one answer.

For example, it might say this about Iraq:

-Sunnis and Shiites intermarried and some tribes were of mixed composition.

HOWEVER,

-If put into duress things may fracture along religious lines.

OR, depending on X,

-Things may fragment tribally.

Then you get things like...

"The elders do X"

"while the young would do Y"

And this would be just one family or one village, etc.

And then as the scope expands and the number of cross interactions increases...yeech.

Probably need a data mining component to use people's blogs to supplement data from their biased, first-person perspectives.

Posted by: Charles at January 6, 2009 01:52 PM

that would be one dynamic map! you'd need a pretty vigilant team to keep it updated in today's political world.

Posted by: mrsachmo at January 6, 2009 12:21 PM

Of course an intelligence agency would need to understand people in depth. Without that understanding, what good are data obtained by spy planes and gadgets?

Posted by: Tad at January 6, 2009 11:55 AM

The Human Terrain Project

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