Can a mathematical model stop terrorists?

Scientific Computing : Terrorist networks form a structural hierarchy based on one-way information flow called a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that makes them similar to many companies and some social media networks. Counterterrorism is interested in stopping the flow of information. A group of mathematicians at Ryerson University in Toronto adapted a previous model of terrorist networks to examine the best counterterrorism actions. They used a specific DAG known as a partially ordered set , in which not all of the nodes are connected; the higher nodes represented the leaders and the lower nodes represented foot soldiers. They used two extreme variations of the networkâmdash;in one, each node had a regular number of connections, and in the other, the number of connections followed a power law. By applying a stochastic model of action to both the counterterrorist and terrorist networks, the researchers reinforced the idea that disrupting information at lower levels is less efficient than disrupting it at high levels. However, by accurately mapping the members and connections of an actual terrorist network, counterterrorist efforts could determine the most effective places for attempting to stop information flow.