Predicting Malicious Behavior: Tools and Techniques for Ensuring Global Security

Introduction

When we think of, or discuss, human behavior, we are focusing on behavior in the past, present, or future—there are no other options. The past is irrevocable and can be described accurately with hindsight and facts. The present is intriguing, and we can describe it as news. In comparison, the future is elusive, there are no facts, and we are constantly surprised by behavior that could not be anticipated. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of a major power such as the Soviet Union, and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, within the United States were unanticipated. The future, it appears, is exceedingly difficult to predict accurately and in a consistent manner. History teaches us how to describe the past, journalism teaches us how to describe the present, and this book describes how we can accurately predict future human behavior.

I wrote Predicting Malicious Behavior: Tools and Techniques for Ensuring Global Security to highlight a new technology that fuses the behavioral and computer sciences to predict future human behavior. The presented technology is based on tested scientific methods, not hopes or guesses as to how future events will unfold. The book presents solid methods that began with a solid foundation of applied behavior analysis (ABA) and describes the current computer science/artificial intelligence extensions presented in as automated behavior analysis (AuBA). The similarity in acronyms is by design. I wanted to pay homage to ABA as the ...