The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting companies to provide new technology that would allow the US Department of Defense to predict future “societal unrest” by keeping track of “all human activities that can be measured.”
A solicitation posted on FedBizOpps outlines DARPA’s intent to fund research and development of “game-changing technologies” that will “provide a decisive information advantage for the U.S. and its allies,” opening the door to “powerful ways to gain insight into the world.”“Essentially all human activities that can be measured, from mercantile to military, are being quantitatively re-examined in the context of this new, “big data”, capability. Early demonstrations have produced remarkable insights into human activities and enabled quantitative decision making,” states the solicitation, adding that the agency is looking to develop new algorithms which can forecast “online correlation for societal unrest.”
DARPA has already been heavily engaged in research aimed at forecasting social unrest, most notably the agency’s Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS), but the results have been patchy, with ICEWS only successful in predicting four out of sixteen rebellions, political upheavals and incidents of ethnic violence during the time period over which it was applied.
