The West Point Team have created an algorithm, called GREEDY_FRAGILE, it shows a greed of connection in between terrorists. The aim of the algorithm is to visualise who should be killed in order to weaken a network.

But could human lives be treated just as another mathematical problem?

The problem is that a math model, like a metaphor, is a simplification. This type of modeling came out of the sciences, where the behavior of particles in a fluid, for example, is predictable according to the laws of physics.

In so many Big Data applications, a math model attaches a crisp number to human behavior, interests and preferences. The peril of that approach, as in finance, was the subject of a recent book by Emanuel Derman, a former quant at Goldman Sachs and now a professor at Columbia University. Its title is “Models. Behaving. Badly.”

 

Ref: Death by Algorithm: West Point Code Shows Which Terrorists Should Disappear First – Wired
Ref: Shaping Operations to Attack Robust Terror Networks – United States Military Academy
Ref: Sure, Big Data Is Great. But So Is Intuition. – The New York Times