Soccer Dad

Suggestion or prediction?

Steve Levitt wrote in his Freakonomics blog at the NY Times, If you were a terrorist, How would you attack?

Hearing about these rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear. One thing that scares people is the thought that they could be a victim of an attack. With that in mind, I’d want to do something that everybody thinks might be directed at them, even if the individual probability of harm is very low. Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.

Also, I’d want to create the feeling that an army of terrorists exists, which I’d accomplish by pulling off multiple attacks at once, and then following them up with more shortly thereafter.

Third, unless terrorists always insist on suicide missions (which I can’t imagine they would), it would be optimal to hatch a plan in which your terrorists aren’t killed or caught in the act, if possible.

Fourth, I think it makes sense to try to stop commerce, since a commerce breakdown gives people more free time to think about how scared they are.

Fifth, if you really want to impose pain on the U.S., the act has to be something that prompts the government to pass a bundle of very costly laws that stay in place long after they have served their purpose (assuming they had a purpose in the first place).

In response, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial today, Levitt's Follies:

The time has obviously come to send Steven Levitt packing and shut down the wacky freakonomics column he writes at the NY Times. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Levitt -- a terror brainstorming session where commenters could suggest the best ways to perpetrate terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups - was published in the paper yesterday. His column ought to be discontinued and Mr. Levitt fired.

Well actually the Wall Street Journal did nothing of the sort, but the NY Times published an editorial Poindexter's Follies, July 30, 2003:

The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop -- an online futures trading market where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups -- was canceled yesterday by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.

The program in question a terrorist futures market. Adm Poindexter wanted to create a market for terror futures. Maybe government officials would participate. Maybe terrorists would. Or maybe someone with specialized knowledge. (Perhaps someone in charge of inventory for Home Depot would notice an unusually large purchase of fertilizer.) Theoretically, the combined knowledge of those participate would effectively predict when a terror attack was likely.

When word of the program got out the ensuing political firestorm led to its cancellation. (It obviously didn't help that Adm. Poindexter was associated with Iran-Contra.) Still as Just one Minute observed, TradeSports took bets on such events. So if the government wasn't going to engage in this sort of predictive exercise, there was apparently enough interest for private enterprise to take up the slack.

Ron Bailey writing in Reason magazine wrote how such a market could work

The PAM concept is the brainchild of George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson. Hanson has been working on the concept of "ideas futures" for years and is in fact working with the DARPA subcontractor that devised the PAM. "Look, intelligence is about spending money in order to find out information about gruesome things like war and terrorism." says Hanson. "This is just an alternative institution that tries to aggregate intelligence information... It's a research project and it might not work, but there is a lot of history and data showing how effective markets are at predicting events."

(h/t Instapundit)

My question is why are so many conservatives upset at Levitt's proposal? Is it because there's no money involved? Is it because this isn't a government initiative? (The latter seems to be Michelle Malkin's objection.) Getting hundreds of answers as his comments indicate are likely to provide thinking into how a terrorist might operate. Will these suggestions necessarily provide law enforcement with useful information? No. But consider that hundreds of people have provided possible scenarios. Isn't there a chance that one or two will give authorities scenarios that they hadn't previously considered and will now act to reduce the chances of those happening?

Might these scenarios give an idea to a terrorist? That's a problem, but at least now the idea is in play and there's a chance that society will be able to defend against it.

I'm not thrilled with Levitt's attitude that the terror threat is exaggerated, but I just don't see that his terrorist suggestion idea is a whole lot different from what the administration was proposing a few years ago.

UPDATE: Hashmonean (welcome back, it's been too long) takes issue with Levitt.

Ya.. sure. Instead of letting the cave dwellers try to outwit us on their own, Mr Levitt prefers to implore western civilization into serving up the next ‘big thing’ in mass murder - pipping hot & fresh for the Islamists.

In an e-mail he explained that the difference between Levitt's exercise and the future's market is that the future's market is closed. (People make guesses that hopefully increase the knowledge of the authorities without sharing it with others would do us harm.)

This view is very similar to the one expressed by Gabriel Schoenfeld at Contentions in Let's help Al-Qaeda kill Americans

There is thus a case for a public discussion of the issue raised by Levitt. But raising the issue and generating actual scenarios in public are two different things. Levitt defends himself on this point by noting that “a lot of the angry responses [he received made] me wonder what everyday Americans think terrorists do all day. My guess is that they brainstorm ideas for terrorist plots. And you have to believe that terrorists are total idiots if it never occurred to them after the Washington D.C. sniper shootings that maybe a sniper plot wasn’t a bad idea.” ... But there are also more than a few terrorists and would-be terrorists roaming around who might qualify as “idiots,” or something close. Most recruits for terrorist action in the Islamist cause are not sophisticated planner types like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but angry, ignorant, low-level figures, used by the higher-level terrorist plotters as expendable “muscle.”

Schoenfeld condemns Levitt because he might well provide ideas for lower level operatives who want to make a name for themselves.

I also agree with Schoenfeld on the point of Levitt's tone.

To Levitt, however, this solemn subject is not solemn at all. He writes about it in a glib and flippant tone, as in his summons to the public to come up with even more lethal scenarios by which al Qaeda might wreak death and destruction on the United States: “I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them.”

And of course in Levitt's followup, he cites Robert Pape's dubious hypothesis that occupation leads to terror. The United States hadn't invaded Iraq in 2001. Clearly I gave him too much credit initially.

terrorism.