A semi-stochastic algorithm approach to generating CBRNE terrorist attack plot scenarios

ABSTRACT

There are many different types of terrorist attacks, but some types of terrorist attacks are infrequent. One example of an infrequent attack type is one that employs chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. There are also types of attacks that have never happened, such as a nuclear terrorist attack. Given the lack of historical incidents, how can counterterrorism researchers, policymakers, and practitioners utilise a data-driven approach to analyse these types of attacks? To address this question, we introduce the Automated Adversary Template Generation (AATG) process to generate synthetic terrorist incidents that are realistic. The AATG process uses semi-stochastic sampling to simulate terrorist adversary behaviours and activities and produce thousands of CBRNE terrorist attack scenarios. Using these scenarios, individuals researching and working in counterterrorism can analyse possible on-the-horizon Weapons of Mass Destruction/Terror (WMD/WMT) attacks and explore these threat spaces with greater fidelity. In particular, this novel methodology is very useful for red teaming purposes conducted by researchers or counterterrorism practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• WMD terrorism
• CBRNE
• counterterrorism
• terrorist actors
• stochastic modeling

Acknowledgements

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, Department of Defense, the United States Government, the University of Maryland, or START.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These terms are defined in Table 2.

2 In this article, we use the term ‘adversary’ in the context of the AATG to refer to terrorist actors, and in the context of red teaming, to refer to the red cell. The definition of terrorism we use is derived from the Global Terrorism Database, and constitutes the ‘use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation’ (GTD, 2021, p. 11).

3 In the case of some terrorist attacks, such as Islamist attacks that include suicide bombings, the individuals engaged in the attack will not reach the ‘Exploit’ stage of the cycle. In cases where a terrorist organisation has orchestrated the attack, this stage would be conducted by other members of the organisation.

4 These stages are separated because the difference in difficulty between acquiring chemical precursors and acquiring equipment can range from negligible to significant.

5 The co-authors of this paper calculated this average based on previous research projects in which they utilised the manual scenario generation process.

6 This is reported by the co-authors based on usage of the AATG for a previous research project.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency award number W911NF2010031.