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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Why The U.S. Government Failed To Anticipate The Rwandan Genocide Of 1994: Lessons For Early Warning And Prevention, Matthew Levinger Feb 2016

Why The U.S. Government Failed To Anticipate The Rwandan Genocide Of 1994: Lessons For Early Warning And Prevention, Matthew Levinger

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

During the months leading up to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, cognitive biases obstructed the capacity of U.S. government analysts and policymakers to anticipate mass violence against the country’s Tutsi minority. Drawing on recently declassified U.S. government documents and on interviews with key current and former officials, this essay shows that most U.S. government reporting on Rwanda before April 1994 utilized a faulty cognitive frame that failed to differentiate between threats of civil war and genocide. Because U.S. officials framed the crisis in Rwanda as a potential civil war, they underestimated the virulence of the threat to Tutsi civilians and …


Modeling Human Behavior To Anticipate Insider Attacks, Frank L. Greitzer , Ph.D., Ryan E. Hohimer Jul 2011

Modeling Human Behavior To Anticipate Insider Attacks, Frank L. Greitzer , Ph.D., Ryan E. Hohimer

Journal of Strategic Security

The insider threat ranks among the most pressing cyber-security challenges
that threaten government and industry information infrastructures.
To date, no systematic methods have been developed that provide a
complete and effective approach to prevent data leakage, espionage, and
sabotage. Current practice is forensic in nature, relegating to the analyst
the bulk of the responsibility to monitor, analyze, and correlate an overwhelming
amount of data. We describe a predictive modeling framework
that integrates a diverse set of data sources from the cyber domain, as well
as inferred psychological/motivational factors that may underlie malicious
insider exploits. This comprehensive threat assessment approach
provides …


Alternative Threat Methodology, Charles B. King Iii Mar 2011

Alternative Threat Methodology, Charles B. King Iii

Journal of Strategic Security

Of the many challenges facing risk analysis practitioners, perhaps the most difficult to overcome is in the field of terrorist threat analysis. When estimating the threat associated with naturally occurring events, historical data provides a great deal of insight into the frequency of those events. Threat associated with accidents applies many operations research tools to gauge future failure-rates (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis being perhaps the most widely known). However, estimating the probability of an individual's or group's attacking a specific (or even a generic) target is an element of risk analysis in which art and intuition are applied far …


Murder And Martial Justice: Spying And Retribution In Wwii America. By Meredith Lentz Adams (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2011), Millard E. Moon Ed.D. Jan 2011

Murder And Martial Justice: Spying And Retribution In Wwii America. By Meredith Lentz Adams (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2011), Millard E. Moon Ed.D.

Journal of Strategic Security

No abstract provided.


Decision Support For Countering Terrorist Threats Against Transportation Networks, Richard Adler, Jeff Fuller Sep 2009

Decision Support For Countering Terrorist Threats Against Transportation Networks, Richard Adler, Jeff Fuller

Journal of Strategic Security

This article presents a dynamic decision support methodology forcounter-terrorism decision support. The initial sections introduce basic objectives and challenges of terrorism risk analysis and risk management. The remainder of the paper describes TRANSEC, a decision support framework for defining, validating, and monitoring strategies focused on managing terrorism risks to international transportation networks. The methodology and software tools underlying TRANSEC are applicable to other homeland security problems, such as critical infrastructure and border protection.


Teaching Bayesian Statistics To Intelligence Analysts: Lessons Learned, Kristan J. Wheaton, Jennifer Lee, Hemangini Deshmukh Feb 2009

Teaching Bayesian Statistics To Intelligence Analysts: Lessons Learned, Kristan J. Wheaton, Jennifer Lee, Hemangini Deshmukh

Journal of Strategic Security

The Community must develop and integrate into regular use new toolsthat can assist analysts in filtering and correlating the vast quantities of information that threaten to overwhelm the analytic process…—Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United StatesRegarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (The WMD Report)1Unlike the other social sciences and, particularly, the physical sciences, where scientists get to choose the questions they wish to answer and experiments are carefully designed to confirm or negate hypotheses, intelligence analysis requires analysts to deal with thedemands of decision makers and estimate the intentions of foreign actors, criminals or business competitors in an environment …


Research Note: Using The Iterate And Dots Databases, Peter A. Flemming, Edward Mickolus, Todd Sandler Nov 2008

Research Note: Using The Iterate And Dots Databases, Peter A. Flemming, Edward Mickolus, Todd Sandler

Journal of Strategic Security

For more than three decades, Vinyard Software's two ITERATE (International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events) datasets have set the standard in events research for terrorism researchers. It has recently been supplemented by the DOTS (Data on Terrorist Subjects) biographies project, which covers all terrorists, supporters, and other individuals mentioned in the ITERATE project.


Strategic Security As A New Academic Discipline, Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D Nov 2008

Strategic Security As A New Academic Discipline, Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D

Journal of Strategic Security

The creation of Henley-Putnam University was an effort to create an academic institution for the purpose of offering degree programs in intelligence management, counterterrorism, and personal protection; subjects that arguably did not exist as academic disciplines when the school was conceived. The experience of two of the co-founders of the school, Nirmalya Bhowmick and Dr. Michael Corcoran, indicated that the training of officers tasked with vital security and intelligence work was carried out by partnering young officers with a training officer to help the new officer learn on the job. The effectiveness of this training depended to a great extent …


Dividing Up Intelligence Education, Robert Clark, Ph.D Nov 2008

Dividing Up Intelligence Education, Robert Clark, Ph.D

Journal of Strategic Security

At this year's annual conference of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) in Monterey, CA, the keynote speaker posed the question, "How much do you need intelligence education outside the beltway?" Which led to a second question discussed during the conference: "What should such education look like?" In short, what should we be teaching in universities? What should we leave to the intelligence community as training? And what could be done in either or both settings? The first question of any educational effort is:What are we preparing students for?


Icworld: An Mmog-Based Approach To Analysis, Kimberly Gill, David Rolston, Wyatt Wong, Robert Pietrusko Nov 2008

Icworld: An Mmog-Based Approach To Analysis, Kimberly Gill, David Rolston, Wyatt Wong, Robert Pietrusko

Journal of Strategic Security

Intelligence analysts routinely work with "wicked" problems—critical,time-sensitive problems where analytical errors can lead to catastrophic consequences for the nation's security. In the analyst's world, important decisions are often made quickly, and are made based on consuming, understanding, and piecing together enormous volumes of data. The data is not only voluminous, but often fragmented, subjective, inaccurate and fluid.Why does multi-player on-line gaming (MMOG) technology matter to the IC? Fundamentally, there are two reasons. The first is technological: stripping away the gamelike content, MMOGs are dynamic systems that represent a physical world, where users are presented with (virtual) life-and-death challenges that can …