U.S. Seeks New Angle to Prevent WMD Proliferation

The U.S. Defense Department has commissioned a new study it hopes will provide an additional strategy in the effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the Boston Globe reported today (see GSN, Jan. 25).

Social scientists and mathematicians from Boston College and Aptima Inc. of Woburn, Mass., over the next three years are to study the links between terror groups, weapons scientists and suppliers.  The ultimate goal of the “social network analysis” is to see “what are the dynamics of a group or network that decides they are going to employ or even build weapons of mass destruction,” said Robert Kehlet, basic university research coordinator at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

“This is really a new investment area for us,” he said.  “We’d like to know how these networks form, how decisions are made, what kind of influence cultural factors have.”

Social network analysis involves plotting cultural and other connections between individuals, groups and computers, the Globe reported.  It could supplement the human intelligence and technological efforts now used against terrorist organizations and to prevent WMD proliferation.

“Terrorist organizations do not have organizational charts.  They have relationships, and if you can understand those relationships you have gained valuable intelligence,” said former Navy analyst Montgomery McFate.

A number of relationships are necessary to operate a WMD black market like that once led by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2006).  Such a network would need people able to acquire, move or produce those weapons.

“Once you’ve mapped out the network you should be able to know who is going to have power and where you need to put your resources to counter that,” said project leader Stephen Brogatti, head of the Boston College Organization Studies Department (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, March 28).

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