ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the use of neuroscience to predict individual and group behaviors. Asymmetries in information can be leveraged to great effect, moreover, by less powerful adversaries. A central concern in the wake of the airplane and later anthrax attacks of 2001 was the capacity for small groups of relatively anonymous individuals to plan and conduct mass casualty attacks. Intelligence collection is arguably the art of induction. The capacity to reach a conclusion based on inference from a limited set of previous information is, both logically and historically, a fraught exercise. Neuroscience’s greatest contribution to information technology is perhaps so obvious as to escape attention. The “neural net,” a subset of a deep learning algorithm, is modeled on the analogy of a neuron as a basic but flexible unit of information processing. Neural nets are a subtype of these algorithms that take as their starting point the structure of human neural connections.
