Home run hitters and terrorists: steroids and Al-Qaeda in cyberspace

There is a fairly narrow distribution of the length of hits by professional baseball players. The outfield length in a baseball stadium is calculated so that a small percentage of the longest hits go over the fence as home runs. The introduction of steroids has resulted in stronger players who can hit the ball harder, and who therefore are more likely to hit a home run.

Most people have pretty similar levels of political activity. Some however are much more active, and some much less active than average. A small percentage of people are willing not only to die for their political beliefs but also to terrorize and even kill others for them. I suspect that the number of terrorists must be small, for too many in any society would be destructive for that society. However, as experience in the Middle East has shown, the number of suicide bombers and terrorists can be increased, in part by recruitment and training. The Internet appears to have been used to recruit, encourage and train terrorists for radical Islamic causes.

The common element in these two examples is that they address behaviors that are at the tail of the distribution. There are basically two ways to increase the number of individuals who fall above the specified limits – move the entire distribution while keeping its shape, or extend the tail of the distribution. One can give steroids to all baseball players, or one can select the best hitters and give only them steroids/

Could one say that there is a network madrasas that provide training that moves their entire student bodies in more radical directions, or that the sites on the Internet recruiting and training terrorists take people from the radical end of the distribution and make them more likely to step over the threshold to terrorism?

Jarret Brachman, who spoke to the National Academy of Science’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board today, suggested that the webmasters of the various Al-Qaeda websites are not a homogeneous bunch, Some target an audience already at the most radical extreme of the community of muslims, while others address a much wider audience. Indeed, he suggests that Al-Qaeda might now be better considered a ideological movement than a organization, that its proponents are not a monolithic community, and that their presence in cyberspace is based on community of interest.

Is this important? I suspect it might be. Approaches that might work against an organization or network of terrorists might not work against an Internet based viral process.

UNESCO was created on the proposition that since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that we must build the defenses of peace. Perhaps we should consider a revision to add that since terrorism begins in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that we should build the defense against terrorism.