We look around the media, as we see on the news from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and the conflict seems incomprehensible to us. And that's certainly how it seemed to me when I started this project. But as a physicist, I thought, well if you give me some data, I could maybe understand this. You know, give us a go.
Pregledavamo po medijima i vidimo vijesti iz Iraka, Afganistana, Sierra Leonea, i sukob nam izgleda neshvatljiv. A tako je svakako izgledao meni kad sam započeo s ovim projektom. Ali kao fizičar, mislio sam, no, ako mi date podatke, možda ću razumjeti. Znate, dajte nam neki početak.
So as a naive New Zealander I thought, well I'll go to the Pentagon. Can you get me some information? (Laughter) No. So I had to think a little harder. And I was watching the news one night in Oxford. And I looked down at the chattering heads on my channel of choice. And I saw that there was information there. There was data within the streams of news that we consume. All this noise around us actually has information. So what I started thinking was, perhaps there is something like open source intelligence here. If we can get enough of these streams of information together, we can perhaps start to understand the war.
Pa sam, kao naivni Novozelanđanin mislio, pa, idem u Pentagon. Možete li mi dati neke informacije? (Smijeh) Ne. Pa sam morao ozbiljnije razmišljati. I jedne večeri sam u Oxfordu gledao vijesti. Gledao sam brbljave glave na programu koji sam odabrao. I uvidio sam da tu postoje informacije. Postoje podaci u tim strujama vijesti koje konzumiramo. Sav taj šum oko nas zapravo sadrži informacije. Pa sam počeo razmišljati da možda postoji nešto poput javno dostupne inteligencije ovdje. Ako dovoljno tih struja vijesti možemo okupiti možda možemo početi razumijevati rat.
So this is exactly what I did. We started bringing a team together, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, of economists, mathematicians. We brought these guys together and we started to try and solve this. We did it in three steps. The first step we did was to collect. We did 130 different sources of information -- from NGO reports to newspapers and cable news. We brought this raw data in and we filtered it. We extracted the key bits on information to build the database. That database contained the timing of attacks, the location, the size and the weapons used. It's all in the streams of information we consume daily, we just have to know how to pull it out. And once we had this we could start doing some cool stuff. What if we were to look at the distribution of the sizes of attacks? What would that tell us?
Pa sam upravo to učinio. Okupili smo tim, interdisciplinarni tim znanstvenika, ekonomista, matematičara. Spojili smo te ljude i počeli s pokušajima da ovo riješimo. Učinili smo to u tri koraka. Prvi korak je bio prikupljanje. Obradili smo 130 različitih izvora informacija -- od izvješća neprofitnih organizacija do novina i kablovskih vijesti. Unijeli smo sirove podatke i filtrirali ih. Izvukli smo ključne dijelove informacija i izgradili bazu podataka. Baza je sadržavala vrijeme napada, lokaciju, snagu i oružje koje se upotrijebilo. Sve je to u strujama informacija koje dnevno trošimo, i samo moramo znati kako to izvući. A kad smo to učinili, mogli smo početi s nekim sjajnim stvarima. Što ako pogledamo distribuciju snage napada? Što bi nam to reklo?
So we started doing this. And you can see here on the horizontal axis you've got the number of people killed in an attack or the size of the attack. And on the vertical axis you've got the number of attacks. So we plot data for sample on this. You see some sort of random distribution -- perhaps 67 attacks, one person was killed, or 47 attacks where seven people were killed. We did this exact same thing for Iraq. And we didn't know, for Iraq what we were going to find. It turns out what we found was pretty surprising. You take all of the conflict, all of the chaos, all of the noise, and out of that comes this precise mathematical distribution of the way attacks are ordered in this conflict. This blew our mind. Why should a conflict like Iraq have this as its fundamental signature? Why should there be order in war? We didn't really understand that. We thought maybe there is something special about Iraq. So we looked at a few more conflicts. We looked at Colombia, we looked at Afghanistan, and we looked at Senegal.
Pa smo počeli s time. I ovdje vidite na vodoravnoj osi imate broj ljudi ubijenih u napadu odnosno snagu napada. A na okomitoj osi imate broj napada. Pa smo ucrtali podatke da dobijemo uzorak. Vidite neku vrstu slučajne distribucije -- možda 67 napada, jednu ubijenu osobu, ili 47 napada u kojima je ubijeno sedam osoba. Baš ovo smo uradili i za Irak. I nismo znali što ćemo otkriti. Pokazuje se da smo otkrili nešto prilično iznenađujuće. Uzmete sve sukobe, sav kaos, sve te šumove, i iz toga proiziđe ova precizna matematička distribucija onoga kako napadi izgledaju u ovom sukobu. Ovo nas je zaprepastilo. Zašto bi sukob poput iračkog pokazao ovo kao svoj fundamentalni potpis? Zašto bi postojao nekakav red u ratu? Nismo to zaista razumjeli. Mislili smo da možda ima nešto posebno u iračkom ratu. Pa smo pogledali još neke sukobe. Pogledali smo Kolumbiju, pogledali smo Afganistan, i Senegal.
And the same pattern emerged in each conflict. This wasn't supposed to happen. These are different wars, with different religious factions, different political factions, and different socioeconomic problems. And yet the fundamental patterns underlying them are the same. So we went a little wider. We looked around the world at all the data we could get our hands on. From Peru to Indonesia, we studied this same pattern again. And we found that not only were the distributions these straight lines, but the slope of these lines, they clustered around this value of alpha equals 2.5. And we could generate an equation that could predict the likelihood of an attack. What we're saying here is the probability of an attack killing X number of people in a country like Iraq is equal to a constant, times the size of that attack, raised to the power of negative alpha. And negative alpha is the slope of that line I showed you before.
I isti se uzorak pojavio u svakom sukobu. Ovo se nije trebalo dogoditi. To su različiti ratovi, s različitim vjerskim skupinama, različitim političkim frakcijama i različitim socioekonomskim problemima. Pa ipak, fundamentalni uzorak u temeljima bio je isti za sve. Pa smo proširili promatranje. Pogledali smo po svijetu, sve podatke do kojih smo mogli doći. Od Perua do Indonezije, opet smo proučavali isti uzorak. I otkrili smo ne samo da su distribucije ove ravne linije, već i nagib tih linija, da se grupiraju oko vrijednosti Alfa od 2,5. Pa smo mogli napisati jednadžbu koja bi predvidjela vjerojatnost napada. Ono o čemu govorimo jest da je vjerojatnost kako će napad ubiti X ljudi u zemlji poput Iraka, jednak konstanti, puta snaga napada, a sve na potenciju negativnog Alfa. A negativni Alfa je nagib linije koju sam vam već pokazao.
So what? This is data, statistics. What does it tell us about these conflicts? That was a challenge we had to face as physicists. How do we explain this? And what we really found was that alpha, if we think about it, is the organizational structure of the insurgency. Alpha is the distribution of the sizes of attacks, which is really the distribution of the group strength carrying out the attacks. So we look at a process of group dynamics: coalescence and fragmentation, groups coming together, groups breaking apart. And we start running the numbers on this. Can we simulate it? Can we create the kind of patterns that we're seeing in places like Iraq? Turns out we kind of do a reasonable job. We can run these simulations. We can recreate this using a process of group dynamics to explain the patterns that we see all around the conflicts around the world.
Pa što? Ovo su podaci, statistika. Što nam ona govori o tim sukobima? S tim smo se izazovom morali suočiti kao fizičari. Kako to objasniti? A ono što smo doista otkrili je da, ako doista promislimo o tome, Alfa predstavlja organizacijsku strukturu pobune. Alfa je distribucija snaga napada, koja je zapravo distribucija snage skupine koja izvodi napade. Pa smo promotrili proces dinamike skupine -- ujedinjenje i fragmentaciju. Skupine koje se ujedinjuju. Skupine u raspadanju. I počeli smo analizirati te brojke. Možemo li to simulirati? Možemo li stvoriti takve uzorke kakve vidimo na mjestima poput Iraka? Pokazuje se da nam uspijeva razumno dobro. Možemo pokrenuti simulacije. Možemo to ponovno stvoriti rabeći proces dinamike skupine kako bismo objasnili uzorke koje vidimo posvuda u sukobima širom svijeta.
So what's going on? Why should these different -- seemingly different conflicts have the same patterns? Now what I believe is going on is that the insurgent forces, they evolve over time. They adapt. And it turns out there is only one solution to fight a much stronger enemy. And if you don't find that solution as an insurgent force, you don't exist. So every insurgent force that is ongoing, every conflict that is ongoing, it's going to look something like this. And that is what we think is happening.
Pa, što se događa? Zašto bi ti različiti – naizgled različiti sukobi pokazivali isti uzorak? Ono što ja vjerujem je da pobunjeničke snage evoluiraju tijekom vremena. Prilagođavaju se. I pokazuje se da postoji samo jedno rješenje u borbi protiv puno jačeg neprijatelja. A ako ste pobunjenici i ne nađete to rješenje, tada ne postojite. Pa svaka pobunjenička sila koja opstaje, svaki sukob koji traje, izgleda nekako ovako. I to je ono što mislimo da se događa.
Taking it forward, how do we change it? How do we end a war like Iraq? What does it look like? Alpha is the structure. It's got a stable state at 2.5. This is what wars look like when they continue. We've got to change that. We can push it up: the forces become more fragmented; there is more of them, but they are weaker. Or we push it down: they're more robust; there is less groups; but perhaps you can sit and talk to them.
Gledajući unaprijed, kako to možemo promijeniti? Kako okončati rat poput iračkog? Kako to izgleda? Alfa je struktura. Njezino stabilno stanje je pri vrijednosti od 2,5. Tako izgledaju ratovi koji traju. Moramo to promijeniti. Možemo to gurnuti prema gore. Snage postaju usitnjenije. Ima ih više, ali su slabiji. Ili to možemo pogurati nadolje. Snažniji su. Ima manje skupina. Ali možda možemo sjesti i s njima razgovarati.
So this graph here, I'm going to show you now. No one has seen this before. This is literally stuff that we've come through last week. And we see the evolution of Alpha through time. We see it start. And we see it grow up to the stable state the wars around the world look like. And it stays there through the invasion of Fallujah until the Samarra bombings in the Iraqi elections of '06. And the system gets perturbed. It moves upwards to a fragmented state. This is when the surge happens. And depending on who you ask, the surge was supposed to push it up even further. The opposite happened. The groups became stronger. They became more robust. And so I'm thinking, right, great, it's going to keep going down. We can talk to them. We can get a solution. The opposite happened. It's moved up again. The groups are more fragmented. And this tells me one of two things. Either we're back where we started and the surge has had no effect; or finally the groups have been fragmented to the extent that we can start to think about maybe moving out. I don't know what the answer is to that. But I know that we should be looking at the structure of the insurgency to answer that question. Thank you. (Applause)
Pa ovaj grafikon, sada ću vam ga pokazati. Nitko ovo još nije vidio. Ovo je doslovno ono što smo otkrili prošli tjedan. Vidimo evoluciju Alfa vrijednosti kroz vrijeme. Vidimo početak. Vidimo rast do stabilnog stanja kako izgledaju ratovi širom svijeta. I vrijednost ostaje takva tijekom invazije na Faludžu sve do bombardiranja u Samarri na iračkim izborima 2006. I sustav se preokreće. Giba se nagore u fragmentirano stanje. Ovdje se događa pobuna. I, ovisno o tome koga pitate, pobuna ju je trebala gurnuti još više gore. A dogodilo se suprotno. Skupine su postale jače. Postale su moćnije. Pa si mislim, dobro, sjajno, nastavit će se spuštati. Možemo razgovarati s njima. Možemo naći rješenje. A dogodilo se obrnuto. Opet je krenulo prema gore. Skupine su usitnjenije. A to mi govori jednu od dvije stvari. Ili se nalazimo na početku, i pobuna nije imala učinka. Ili su, napokon, skupine do te mjere usitnjene da možemo početi razmišljati o izvlačenju. Ne znam koji je odgovor na to pitanje. Ali znam da bismo trebali promatrati strukturu pobune kako bismo odgovorili na to pitanje. Hvala vam. (Pljesak)