Managing Violent NeoLuddite Behavior

IE 537 LARGE SCALE SYSTEMS

Benjamin Neusse

4/23/2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This purpose of this project included developing policy options that would reduce the NeoLuddite use of violence as a means to resist social change. This project involved the investigation of policies in several categories including: Regulations; Fiscal Incentives; Information, Education & Outreach; Technology Development & Deployment; Inter/Intra Organizational Relations; and Enforcement. Policy options were modeled with an understanding of Social Movement Theory which includes a framing process, a mobilization process and the existing opportunities and constraints in the social environment. Policy options were evaluated based upon their effects in several dimensions of human quality of life including: Human Health, Human Rights, Economic Well-Being, Environmental Quality, Cultural Heritage Preservation, Availability of Services, and Confidence in Government.

The project used two NetLogo models, a decision analysis and system dynamics to evaluate polices as well was variables within policies where applicable. The project focused on simply to implement yet high-impact polices. The recommendations for policy options include:

1) Travel in formation of at least three or more Friendly units.2) Develop and deploy technology to increase the precision of friendly weapons.3) Create and deploy information, education & outreach programs that run for short periods of time and rapidly adjust when unsuccessful or double down when successful.4) Refrain from putting money into the area that is not in exchange for market value of good and services.5) Where security situation allows do invest money in facilities that provide essential services such as water, sewer, and electricity and charge market rates for such services.

INTRODUCTION

The use of direct force to achieve annihilation of the NeoLuddite population betrays our values and makes us into the very monster we fight. Thus, we must consider other means to achieving our goals. This situation involves humans acting together toward a common purpose otherwise known as a Social Movement. In order to reduce and eventually eliminate the NeoLuddite use of violence, some combination of factors must persuade and convince individual humans that using violence is not in their best interest.

Social Movement Theory provides a way to understand how some humans are able to motivate and influence others into action. Viewing the situation through the lens of Social Movement Theory presents the opportunity to understand the possible factors and motivations for violence. Additionally, Social Movement Theory can provide insight into the factors and motivations most likely to persuade and convince NeoLuddites to refrain from using violence. Furthermore, Social Movement Theory can highlight the potential effects of various policy options.

Social Movement Theory identifies several factors of influence that are typical dimensions of human quality of life. They are: Human Health, Human Rights, Economic Well-Being, Environmental Quality, Cultural Heritage Preservation, Availability of Services, and Confidence in Government. Viewing the NeoLuddite situation with respect to these factors yields the following:

Human Health: On the surface, human health does not appear to be a major contributing factor to NeoLuddite angst, nor does it appear that the NeoLuddites are using violence in order to achieve improvements in their health or the quality of their health care. Future research into NeoLuddite attitudes on their quality of health could prove useful. Nonetheless, we must take care not to neglect or worsen health quality through policy provisions.

Human Rights: Human rights is a tricky issue, largely because many people think that anything can be labeled a right and then this creates obligation on others. Rights are exclusive claims, therefore human rights are an individual’s own exclusive claim to their thoughts, words, actions, and the combination of those into fruitful labor. This understanding of human rights is rational, reasonable, and logically defendable because these are the rights inherent to all humans regardless of situation or relative economic status. The NeoLuddites seem to claim that they have a right to employment and the right to exclude the use of technology to perform the functions that they perform with their labor. This NeoLuddite claim violates human rights in that they claim both halves of a transaction when they claim a right to a job. Furthermore, they claim ownership over anyone else’s attempt to use technology for their own purposes.

The NeoLuddites, do however, have a legitimate claim to their real private property and to what extent they will allow technology to be used on or placed upon their property. Policy should of course respect and even champion the individual human rights of all people, and policy should point out where other’s claims in fact violate human rights.

Economic Well-Being: The NeoLuddites can make a case that the introduction of technology substantially impacts their ability to earn a living, however this does not justify the use of force and violence. This does present the opportunity for the NeoLuddiets to generate economic activity based on artisan, historical, and tourist industries, which would accommodate their aversion to technology and their need for economic activity. Many social problems are economic in nature and there exists much potential for beneficial policy directed at economic well-being.

Environmental Quality: Technology often brings with it damage to the environment which is likely a strong motivator here as the NeoLuddite land owners and village dwellers must bear the cost of the environmental damage while those who use and benefit from the use of technology do not. There also exists much potential for environmental policy that internalizes the externalities and holds those who cause environmental damage responsible and accountable.

Cultural Heritage Preservation: The NeoLuddites certainly have a case that advances in technology erodes their cultural heritage of traditional ways of doing things. They certainly have a right to their culture and to preserve their culture, culture is in many respects a means of preserving successful patterns from the past. With respect to using violence to preserve NeoLuddite cultural heritage it may be possible to make the case to the NeoLuddites that violence is not a part of their culture and that the very use of violence is eroding NeoLuddite culture.

Availability of Services: The use of technology does not appear to have reduced the NeoLuddite access to essential services. It is possible but not likely that increasing access to essential services would reduce the NeoLuddite use of violence to prevent technological advancement. However, in developing policy we must consider how use of technology to deliver essential services could exacerbate NeoLuddite grievances and fuel further violence.

Confidence in Government: Government is the “legitimate” use of force to impose the will of some portion of the population onto all of the population. The NeoLuddite use of violence indicates that they have no confidence in government to impose the NeoLuddite will on the rest of the population and have thus resorted to their own use of violence to do so. “Legitimizing” the violence does not solve the problem only policies that support mutually agreeable and beneficial relationships can reduce the use of violence over the long term.

APPROACH

The approach begins with the desired end in mind, namely a reduction of the NeoLuddites use of violence to impose their will onto others. The introduction of this report identified the utility of Social Movement Theory and the aspects of life quality that we wish to improve in order to reduce the attractiveness of violence. The general approach is to ask how we can use certain engineering controls to influence social behavior, controls such as: Regulations; Fiscal Incentives; Information, Education & Outreach; Technology Development & Deployment; Inter/Intra Organizational Relations; and Enforcement.

Answering this question results in a set of plausible policy options that are then evaluated through the use of a modeling and analysis tools and techniques. Competing policy options in each category are evaluated against one another. Options are and then compared through to determine the policy option with the least risk, least cost, or highest benefit. Those policy options then form the set of recommendations for the decision makers.

Heuristically speaking, it has been the authors experience that passive polices focused on the function and behavior of the entity enacting the policy generally perform better than active policies that the entity must enforce upon others. Policies that require external enforcement tend to require a greater expenditure of resources as there must be continued capital expenditures to detect and then correct deviations from policy. Additionally external policies often create externalities and incentives for others to “cheat” the policies through deception, concealment, and other means. This tends to induce a wickedness as adaptive and emergent behavior result in worse problems than those the policies intended to solve. Thus as much as possible the approach considers passive policies in the various engineering control categories.

Regulations: In order to reduce the attractiveness of violence as a means to impose their will upon others I will investigate regulations that reduce friendly vulnerability to NeoLuddite attacks. One option is the use of coordinated formations to improve attack detection. A NetLogo model will provide data to compare the effects of formation size (measured in the number of friendlies in a formation) on friendly casualties and most importantly mobilization of bystanders into the NeoLuddite campaign of violence.

Fiscal Incentives: The death of bystanders in the violent exchanges between Friendlies and NeoLuddites tends to mobilize more members of the population to join the violent NeoLuddite movement. It is possible that financial condolence payments could reduce and assuage the death anger and result in fewer bystanders mobilized toward the use of violence. However, there also remains the possibility that angry bystanders will simply use the payments

to fund NeoLuddite violence. A system dynamics model can help determine the value of condolence payments that is least likely to support violence but reduce death anger.

Information, Education & Outreach: Policies that link NeoLuddite violence to reduced health quality, reduction of economic well-being, destruction of the environment, and reduction in the delivery of essential services could reduce bystanders’ propensity to support the use of violence. This policy is essentially a marketing campaign aimed at countering the narrative used in the NeoLuddite framing process. The cost and benefit of such a campaign is best evaluated through decision analysis. In this decision under analysis is how to allocate the marketing budget between research costs and multiple executions of the campaign over three month quarters. The analysis measures the benefits by the number of months the budget allows a successful campaign to be conducted.

Technology Development & Deployment: Technology takes money, time, and manpower to develop, test, and deploy, each of these are limited and scarce resources for any organization. Thus it is important to seek out technology that will make the greatest impact in reaching the desired ends. A NetLogo model will provide insight into which technological improvements might yield the greatest reduction in successful NeoLuddite attacks and therefore reduce violence as a desirable option to effect social change. To investigate the relative benefits of technological improvements I modified The NetLogo model to allow the investigation and comparison of increasing engagement distance, increasing field of engagement angle, and improving targeting precision thus reducing collateral damage.

Inter/Intra Organizational Relations: Policy recommendations in this area are rather difficult to model without knowing the size, organization, and process flow. If one had some information to use, system dynamics would greatly help to investigate inter/intra organizational relations. There are certain best practices which can be recommended in all cases such as sending and requesting liaison officers to and from each organization. Additionally creating a coordination center (or even web portal) that would bring together members of various organizations and allow sharing of information, development of lines of operation and effort as well as coordinated measuring of progress.

Enforcement: It is the author’s experiences that policies that require enforcement are not effective and at time counterproductive as they requires considerable resources to enforce. For example a policy to restrict physical access to the NeoLuddite area would simply make fixed easy to attack targets out of the outposts and facilities required to maintain control over entry and exit of the NeoLuddite area. The same is likely to happen for enforcement of trade restrictions as the customs inspection stations simply become targets for suicide bombings.

RESULTS

Regulations: BLUF: Recommend the policy for friendly movement require formations of no less than three independent units capable of coordinated action to both scan and engage NeoLuddite threats. Resulting data from a NetLogo model of friendly units moving and working together in formation showed less risk to friendlies as the number of units in a formation increased. This model allowed the trade-off between number of friendlies present and dispersed in the environment with the detection and engagement range of friendlies working together to scan more area. As the number of independently moving friendlies decreased in order to create formations with larger detection and engagement cones the number of friendly deaths decreased dramatically. In increase in the number of friendlies in a formation also reduced the number of NeoLuddites killed, presumably because fewer engagements opportunities presented with less agents to interact. A large effect also occurred with regards to bystander deaths. Presumably as Friendlies moving in formation received benefits from better detection and engagement less NeoLuddites were able to detonate and kill bystanders. Overall the greatest effect by far was the drastic reduction of friendly casualties. This model may underestimate friendly casualties to some degree as a successful NeoLuddite detonation only resulted in one casualty and rather than kills of every friendly in the formation. Thus the formation policy should also be studied to determine the optimal spacing to reduce the likelihood of one NeoLuddite detonation resulting in multiple casualties, but that still allow for integration of detection and engagement cones.

Figure 1 compares formation size and the resulting deaths after 1,000 ticks in a NetLogo simulation. Larger formations afforded more opportunity to engage NeoLuddite bombers while reducing the opportunity for NeoLuddite Bombers to engage Friendlies. This has a side-benefit of reducing Bystander-deaths, which improves Human Health and is more responsive to Human Rights.

Friendly Deaths NL-Deaths Bystander-Deaths1

10

100

1000

10000

Deaths by Category of Various Formation Size

123456

Figure 1: Deaths by Category as modeled in NetLogo Agent Based Modeling SimulationNote: Y-Axis shows deaths in log base 10

Fiscal Incentives: BLUF: Recommend against any policy that provides money to members of the community due to the risk that those members sympathetic to the NeoLuddite cause would transfer funds to violent extremists providing them funding for additional materials to make violence. The results of a system dynamics model indicated that even as the monetary value of condolence payments for bystanders killed as collateral damage in the conflict increased there still remained a residual propensity of sympathy with the NeoLuddite cause. The system dynamics model showed that increasing the value of the condolence payments in order to reduce the sympathy with the NeoLuddite cause ultimately become a source of funding for more violence, which fed into a requirement for additional condolence payments. The system dynamics model included a fixed budged for condolence payments so as the number of condolence payments increased the condolence value decreased and thus condolence payments became less effective at suppressing sympathies with NeoLuddites. This resulted in more of the population turning over more of the condolence payment to finance further NeoLuddite violence. Though additional models for other situations were not built or ran, the cycle seen in this model seems to indicate that the results would be similar for most policies of fiscal incentive where the fiscal incentive greatly exceeds the value of that for which it is exchanged. For example, gun or bomb material buy-back programs that paid above market value for such materials would likely result in profit schemes where the profits had the potential to finance the violent opposition. Thus such buy-back programs would have to function at the market value, but then they would not be that effective in quickly moving the weapons or bomb making materials out of the environment. Any policy of fiscal incentives must be tied to exchanges of value parity so as not to risk financing adversaries.

Figure 2 Illustrates the effects of condolence payments on both the propensity to win the hearts and minds of the population and the effect on financing more bombings by those beyond condolence. Figure 2: Causal Diagram and Graphic Results of a System Dynamics Simulation in VinSim PLE

Information, Education & Outreach: BLUF: Recommend marketing or psychological operations focus on many short cycles with the majority of the budget aimed at the execution of the campaign rather than spending time and money on conducting research to find the best marketing messages. The decision analysis indicated that in marketing it is best to fail early and fail often rather than to waste precious time and money researching and analyzing to fine tune the message. The decision analysis also indicated that it would be best to spend time and resources placing “many small bets” to quickly determine what messages would work best and focusing time and resources on messages that turned out to be successful. Though the analysis did not directly include the effect of adversarial messages, the policy of publishing information, education, and conducting outreach early and often prevents the adversary from taking advantage of silence and empty space left when the Friendlies do not address topics. The author does recommend conducting the decision analysis with more accurate and realistic data with respect to cost of the campaign, cost of research, the likelihood of success as well as the improvement to the likelihood of success one could expect to result from varying level of research.

Figure 3 Shows the trade-off between repeating marketing campaigns that may or may not be successful with conducting research and then fewer iterations of marketing campaigns. This tree measures success as the expected number of months in which a successful campaign is conducted. It indicates a higher chance of success when more funding is allocated toward multiple iterations that may or may not be successful at the expense of funding research which cannot guarantee success but only increases the chance of success at the cost of the ability to repeat any success.

Figure 3: Decision Tree depicting Decision Analysis of the allocation of limited marketing budget

Technology Development & Deployment: BLUF: Recommend a policy that focuses time and resources towards the development and deployment of technology that give Friendly Forces more precision when engaging NeoLuddites with the desired effect to reduce collateral damage or killing bystanders. A NetLogo simulation allowed for the comparison of the effects of increasing Friendly weapon range, increasing Friendly engagement area, and increasing Friendly engagement precision. Doubling the engagement range had the counterproductive effect of creating many more bystander deaths resulting in more NeoLuddite bombers and considerably more Friendly deaths. A doubling of the engagement field also increased the number of bystander deaths, but had little effect to increase the generation of NeoLuddites, while it resulted in the lowest number of Friendly deaths. Though doubling the precision of Friendly weapons did not result in the lowest number of friendly casualties it did results in few casualties than doubling the range or in not deploying any new technology. Doubling the Friendly precision, however did have the strongest beneficial effect in that is drastically reduced the number of NeoLuddite bombers generated. This result is likely the most promising one because it indicates a way to reduce the NeoLuddites use of violence as a means to affect their desired social change. Overall, the NetLogo model showed that the best use of technology would be efforts to reduce collateral damage and bystander deaths.

NeoLuddites Bombers Gen-

erated

Bystander Deaths Friendly Deaths499.999999999999

4999.99999999999

50000

Effects of Technological Improvements

Base CaseDouble Engagement FieldDouble Precision Double Engagement Range

Figure 4 shows that doubling the engagement rage results in the lowest Friendly casualties but at the expense of more collateral damage which is counterproductive to human health and human rights. Though doubling the weapon precision reduces friendly casualties to some degree the greatest effect is in the reduction of collateral damage which has the greatest

Figure 4: Violence metrics results from a NetLogo Agent Based Modeling Simulation comparing technological improvementsNote: Y-Axis lists deaths and Bombers generated in Log base 10 scale

positive effect on human health and human rights along with indirect improvement in confidence in the government.

Considering the results together in the context of social movement theory and the typical dimension of human quality of life allows the development of a more complete portfolio of policy. Policies that reduce the number of bystander deaths positively influences human health and do a better job to uphold human rights. A successfully marketed narrative that shows the Friendlies care more for the lives of bystanders than the NeoLuddites increases confidence in government. This message can also tie improvements in the security situation to the ability of the government to provide essential services. Policies that include government fiscal interventions tend to distort market incentives, produce unintended consequences such as perpetuating stagnant economic well-being, and carry the risk of inadvertently financing the violent extremists. Whereas fiscal incentives that are tied to a true exchange of value at the market rate reduce the likelihood of funds being diverted to adversaries.

Based on the results of the model taken together the author recommends the following policies:

1) Travel in formation of at least three or more Friendly units2) Develop and deploy technology to increase the precision of friendly weapons3) Create and deploy information, education & outreach programs that run for short periods of time and rapidly adjust when unsuccessful or double down when successful4) Refrain from putting money into the area that is not in exchange for market value of good and services5) Where security situation allows do invest money in facilities that provide essential services such as water, sewer, and electricity and charge market rates for such services.

COMMENTARY

Summary: This project attempted to find policies that could manage NeoLuddite use of violence. Policy options fell into various categories, which were interpreted through Social Movement Theory, and then evaluated for their effect on dimensions of human quality of life. Since the NeoLuddite use of violence demonstrates an inability to enforce peace, this project did not consider additional enforcement policies as viable options. This project focused on examining policies that would be the easiest to unilaterally implement and control. Four policies were investigated using various modeling techniques to determine the feasibility, suitability and optimal settings for options within policies as applicable.

A NetLogo Agent Based Model demonstrated that a regulation requiring friendly forces to travel in formation resulted in less violence and thus an improvement in human health, human rights, and a decrease in the attractiveness of violence as a means to achieve NeoLuddite goals.

A system dynamics model in VinSim PLE illustrated the risks of inadvertently financing violence through fiscal incentives. As the value of fiscal incentives increased the propensity to fund violent extremists decreased. However, the small chance remained that fiscal incentives would not alter everyone’s behavior and some individual would turn the funding over to NeoLuddite extremists who would then purchase more materials with which to mobilize and fund violence.

A decision tree helped to refined the allocation of a limited information, education, and outreach budget aimed at changing opinions of the acceptable use of violence. The decision analysis indicated that many short run campaigns offered a greater overall chance of success than allocating funding into research that would result in fewer but more effective messages to counter the framing of the NeoLuddite social movement.

Another NetLogo Agent Based Model indicated that the best use of research and development budget would be toward increasing the precision of Friendly weapon systems due to it effect of reducing collateral damage. This technology improvement would have the greatest impact on improving human health, human rights, and confidence in the government.

These four policies implemented together are mutually supporting. The effect of increasing formation size on reducing bystander deaths and overall violence presents a sound opportunity upon which an information campaign could capitalize. This would buy time for the development and deployment of improved precision technology which could further reduce collateral damage, which could then be highlighted by additional information, education, and outreach messaging. Refraining from injecting money into the environment also prevents the financing of further violence constraining the social movement.

Conclusions: This project identified some easy to implement yet high-impact policies that should form the basis of a portfolio of policy options to reduce and eventually eliminate the NeoLuddites use of violence. Policy makers must keep in mind that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” Though this project used very simple models the author finds that the results of the analysis provides useful insights into the development of the recommended portfolio of policy options. Additionally the models highlighted areas of risk where some policies investigated were determined to be more likely to worsen the situation. Given the short timeframe and small workforce of this project the author recommends additional study before fully implementing any of these policies

Recommendations for future research: The most pressing need for further research is to verify the values used in the decision tree. Research may provide a far greater chance of success and at a far less cost relative to the cost of actual information, education, and outreach campaigns. Certain values could change the optimal decisions at each node and result in a far different recommended level of research. Other areas of fruitful research would be to consider the cost of developing the three technological improvement options. Some options may prove to be too costly to implement or may not be projected to be deployed in time to make a substantial difference. Additionally once estimates of cost are known it should be considered with some measure of benefit in a new comparison to determine the best allocation of research and development funding. This project considered the number of friendly units in a formation but it did not consider the shape and size of the formation. A higher resolution model with much smaller scale would be useful to determine optimal formation shapes and the spacing distance between the individual engagement platforms. A final area for future research would be the federation of all four policies into one model. NetLogo may be able to handle the addition of an information, education and outreach model as well as a fiscal incentives model that each affect the generate rates of NeoLuddite bombers.

APPENDICES

Models:

1) Formation Size Simulation: “Project neo-Luddite simulation (Formation)”

2) Condolence Payment System Dynamics Model: “Condolence”

3) Marketing Budget Allocation Decision Analysis: “Marketing Campaign”

4) Technology Simulation: “Project neo-Luddite simulation (Tech)”

Data Output Results:

1) “Project neo-Luddite simulation (Formation) All plots”

2) “Project neo-Luddite simulation (Tech) All plots”