An Online Afghanistan

This BBC article outlines how terrorists could use virtual worlds to advance their causes:

"There's more of a chance of things like Jihadi worlds coming online in the next five years. The visual richness of virtual worlds made them good places to educate recruits about techniques. We can see groups emerging in cyber spaces and virtual communities that would be wholly radical. They would organise and radicalise in virtual worlds and attack using cyber methods without becoming a real world presence in any real way."

A problem for insurgents is finding secure areas in which to train and rehearse attacks, especially groups that operate in densely populated urban or rural areas. During its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA had to choose its training areas carefully, to avoid detection by British and Irish security forces.

A related problem, for terrorist networks that are dispersed regionally or globally, is connecting instructors and recruits. Before 9/11, jihadis went to training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, with US and NATO forces operating in the Afghan/Pakistan theatre, this approach is increasingly circumscribed. As for secure websites - these are useful for indoctrination but offer only limited scope for instruction. Could virtual worlds provide insurgent and terrorist groups with a solution?

The US Army pioneered the use of video and computer games for training soldiers. It developed the immensely popular America's Army, a net-based recruitment tool designed to attract young people who grew up with first person shooter games. Since then it has built across-the-board combat training simulators which, according to TSJOnline, "allow realistic and immersive 3-D visualization of the battlefield". The US Army even has a gaming project office, which is developing simulators that allow users to build and customize their own scenarios for training and rehearsing missions.

Meanwhile, many military units are buying commercial off-the-shelf gaming packages:

"...some users...argue that games are cheap, can be designed more quickly than in-house military simulations, and even if they don’t fill 100 percent of a training requirement, they’re better than no training tool at all....A field-grade officer familiar with simulations said soldiers like games for quick training. 'The controls are easy to use to move, shoot, communicate and link things up.'"

It's possible that terrorist groups will adopt a similar approach, recognizing the potential for computer gaming (online or otherwise) to provide them with a secure medium for indoctrinating and instructing recruits, and rehearsing operations. Sort of like an online Afghanistan.   

Comments

[Jeff]

Excellent piece Kotare.

I think the insurgents will use technology in anyway possible to help remove the Great Satan. Web based or virtual reality training has its limits---because, of course, it’s not reality. It lacks the real feel, or the punishment that teaches.

I think the insurgents have made the most headway with the internet, in their ability to indoctrinate and recruit. UBL himself never had a problem with Western technology. He indulged in it regularly. He just hated the liberal perverted ways of Westerners.

[Kotare]

Thanks Jeff.

I agree that virtual reality training has its limits. Then again, one advantage is that it lets you repeat your mistakes!

[ubiwar]

I think you're right to state that these are 'possible' scenarios. There has been a fair amount of hyperbolic reporting on this issue - not the BBC article btw - and it pays to be cautious in our assessments of terrorist use of virtual worlds.

The good folks at the Mercyhurst Virtual Jihad Project recently concluded that jihadis' use of Second Life, for example, is currently minimal but that we should expect an increase in exploratory activity over the next 1-2 years. Definitely a case of 'watch this space'.

[Kotare]

Thanks for the link. I was interested to read that jihadists might use SL for money laundering - very novel!

[ubiwar]

No problem.

The use of SL for money laundering is almost certainly being monitored for 'unusual' transactions, much as any forex market might be. I'm not sure off the top of my head if Linden Labs themselves are doing it, although it would seem likely.

One really interesting possibility is the use of botnets to generate transient virtual worlds that might only exist for a few days at most, allowing the creation of ad hoc virtual training grounds. This post at CTBlog addresses this and is real food for thought.

[Kotare]

I thought that the last para in the CTBlog post which you linked to raised some interesting ideas. For exampe, if you could successful and secretly penetrate such networks and virtual training grounds, you could learn a lot about new tactics and techniques that were being rehearsed.

[ubiwar]

Absolutely. The problem with SL and known VWs is that terrorists/insurgents realise that. The problem with distributed botnets is that they're nigh on impossible to locate. Catch-22?

[Kotare]

I guess that brings us back to the need to identify and penetrate the groups that provide the infrastructure, and the groups that use it.

[ubiwar]

Aye. Intelligence is all. In this case humint, but also greatly augmented systems of web traffic surveillance, pattern recognition, etc. It's a tall order to do this, but you're right.