Researchers prove artificial intelligence can decode Islamic State fight strategy

In an attempt to better understand the military strategy of Islamic State extremists, US researchers have turned to artificial intelligence. 

What they discovered is that this technology is in fact pretty accurate in determining how this breakaway faction of fighters reacts to outside military aggression.

The algorithmic system analyzed 2,200 recorded incidents of IS activity from the latter half of 2014. While a paper detailing the study’s full findings will be presented at a conference this week, one of the facts released was the group’s systematic use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) when confronted with an aerial barrage of bombings. 

“When they experience a lot of air strikes against them they shift away from a large infantry-style operation and use IEDs,” explained Arizona State University’s Paulo Shakarian, one of the co-authors of the paper and a former US army officer who served in Iraq in 2006. 

Additionally, the researchers discovered Islamic State fighters increase their use of car bombs before staging large infantry operations in a targeted area. An example of this occurred in Iraq.

“We believe this relationship is because they want to prevent reinforcements from the Iraqi army getting out of Baghdad,” explained Dr. Shakarian.

One finding that perplexed the team was sharp increases in arrests made by the Islamic State following Syrian airstrikes. The researchers could not understand the relationship between the two events and why the arrests always followed bombings by Syria, but upon later review, Dr. Shakarian says the group now believes they might be retaliatory attempts to weed out Syrian intelligence agents who might have played a role in setting up the targets of these strikes. 

Speaking to the overall findings of their study, Dr. Shakarian said the fighting strategy employed by Islamic State extremists is significantly different than that which he experienced in Iraq nine years ago. The extremist group the military is dealing with today is much more complex and dynamic; as such, he explained, the nature of their fighting strategies has not been easy to understand, at least, not without computational analysis. 

Dr. Shakarian will present the paper to delegates of KDD 2015, a conference on data analysis, in Sydney, Australia, next week. 

Via BBC