Developing conflict-deterrence strategies for the "Gray Zone"
NewsApril 24, 2018
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Intelligent systems developer Charles River Analytics (CRA) is teaming with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to research methods that would improve Department of Defense (DoD) analysis of potential deterrence strategies in the so-called Gray Zone. The two-year contract is valued at $1 million.
Conflicts found in the "Gray Zone" -- a construct on the conflict spectrum meant to denote an area between traditional notions of war and peace -- are not formal wars, may not resemble conventional conflicts, and might not trigger conventional military responses, but they nonetheless pose actual strategic risks for the United States. Because they are often not "fought" in a physical space with a known enemy, battling such enemies is very difficult.
For example, say CRA officials, Gray Zone strategies can span a wide range of domains and stakeholders across the full spectrum of the government's Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence and Law Enforcement (DIMEFIL) corps. Strategic assessment requires careful consideration of uncertain conditions, knowledge of many disparate actions and outcomes, and acknowledgment that measuring the success of deterrence or a change in an adversary’s intentions is particularly difficult.
Under the terms of the agreement with DARPA, the Charles River team is developing Behavioral Analysis Leveraging Human Intelligence to Evaluate Viable and Explainable Deterrence Strategies (BELIEVES), a Gray Zone analysis tool set for assessing deterrence strategies. When developed, Charles River and DARPA intend for BELIEVES to be used to enable analysts to model ever-changing environments, consider the adversary’s point of view, and predict a given strategy’s effectiveness based on past behavior.
David Blumstein, CRA senior scientist and principal investigator on the BELIEVES effort, said of the project: “We’re using the latest research in computational and social sciences to model not just an uncertain and ever-changing environment, but also adversary behavior and intent. We are developing a powerful and easy-to-use modeling and analysis tool set to better predict Gray Zone activity, helping our government decision-makers prevent conflicts.”
The BELIEVES tool will include a modeling framework based on CRA’s Figaro probabilistic programming language, which company officials say uses the latest advances in strategic analysis and game theory to compactly model ambiguous situations and indeterminate adversary objectives and plans that will be useful in modeling and solving Gray Zone conflicts.
