guardian | A US Department of Defense (DoD) research
programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and
tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the
supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme
is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant
insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense
policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant
commands."
Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative'
partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the
social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions
of the world of strategic importance to the US."
Among the
projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led
study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which
aims to develop an empirical model "of the dynamics of social movement
mobilisation and contagions." The project will determine "the critical
mass (tipping point)" of social contagians by studying their "digital
traces" in the cases of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian
Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi
park protests in Turkey."
Twitter posts and conversations will be
examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and
when they become mobilised."
Another project awarded this year to
the University of Washington "seeks to uncover the conditions under
which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic
change originate," along with their "characteristics and consequences."
The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on
"large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in
enduring activity," and will cover 58 countries in total.
Last year, the DoD's Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine 'Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?'
which, however, conflates peaceful activists with "supporters of
political violence" who are different from terrorists only in that they
do not embark on "armed militancy" themselves. The project explicitly
sets out to study non-violent activists:
"In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence."
The
project's 14 case studies each "involve extensive interviews with ten
or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though
sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence."
I
contacted the project's principal investigator, Prof Maria Rasmussen of
the US Naval Postgraduate School, asking why non-violent activists
working for NGOs should be equated to supporters of political violence –
and which "parties and NGOs" were being investigated – but received no
response.
Similarly, Minerva programme staff refused to answer a
series of similar questions I put to them, including asking how "radical
causes" promoted by peaceful NGOs constituted a potential national
security threat of interest to the DoD.
