Since the 1970s, the United States intelligence community (mainly the Department of Defense and the CIA) has been trying to build computer simulations that will accurately predict wars, revolutions or, currently, terrorist attacks. Currently, the United States is spending about $40 million a year on this sort of thing. Politicians and government officials complain that these simulations don't work.
Actually, the models do work, but not in the way most people think. The problem is that the models can predict what large groups of people are likely to do, over a period of time (months or years). They cannot, and never claimed to, predict what individuals will do over shorter periods (days or weeks). Thus many models predicted that Egypt, Tunisia, and most Arab nations were unstable and headed for unrest and revolution. But because these models did not name a specific day or month, they were considered a failure.
Man, I'd love to see that stuff.
I wonder if the modelers are allowed to run simulations on America?
