Counter-Terrorism and Design Thinking: Supporting Strategic Insights and Influencing Operations

Abstract

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Jakarta, Ankara, Ivory Coast and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 respectively, highlight the complexity and challenges associated with counter-terrorist operations. The words of Rosenhead and Mingers (Rational analysis for a problematic world revisited. John Wiley and Sons Ltd., West, Sussex, England, 2001 [48: 4–5]) resonate with the complex space of counter-terrorism and these recent incidents. They argue that we ‘…are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other’. Such a complex problem space can be viewed as “wicked problems” or “messes” (Rittel and Weber in Policy Sci 4:155–169, 1973 [46]). Rosenhead and Mingers (Rational analysis for a problematic world revisited. John Wiley and Sons Ltd., West, Sussex, England, 2001 [48: 4–5]) describe ‘messy problems’ as that which have inherent complex interdependencies and dynamic complexity. They argue that ‘Individual problems may be solved. But if they are components of a mess, the solutions to individual problems cannot be added, since those solutions will interact’. Within the context of counter-terrorism, deep uncertainty is the source of surprises and shocks in a system and the main cause of discontinuity in the strategic space of a system. It highlights the complex social factors that require an empathic approach to uncover the connectivity and processes (Masys Exploring the security landscape—non-traditional security challenges. Springer Publishing, 2016 [36]) supporting this emergence of violent extremism. The problem space transcends domain specific analysis to require a more inclusive approach that draws upon insights from sociology, economics, political science, humanities in the problem framing (Masys in Applications of systems thinking and soft operations research in managing complexity. Springer Publishing, 2015 [35]). New methods and methodologies have evolved to address such inherent complexity in problem spaces. Design thinking, system and complexity approaches emerge as a response to the inability of traditional approaches to handle human and social aspects of problem situations. The epidemiological model (disease model) of terrorism is a metaphor that captures the inherent complexity of terrorism (Stares and Yacoubian in Terrorism as a disease: an epidemiological model for countering Islamist extremism, 2007 [53]). References to terrorism being a “virus” or to al Qaeda “mutating” or “metastasizing” are common. Holistic approaches to medicine and disease have leveraged design thinking approaches to tackle the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Like the epidemiological model, it is argued in this chapter that design thinking can be instrumental in foresight and strategic intervention to support counter-terrorism. Tetlock and Gardner (Superforecasting: the art and science of prediction. Penguin, Random House, 2015 [59: 123]) ask the question ‘following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, will there be another attack carried out by Islamist militants’? To examine such a question Tetlock and Gardner (Superforecasting: the art and science of prediction. Penguin, Random House, 2015 [59: 123]) argue that there is a requirement to generate different perspectives and synthesize them. They liken this to a dragonfly. ‘Information from these thousands of unique perspectives flows into the dragonfly’s brain where it is synthesized into vision so superb that the dragonfly can see in almost every direction simultaneously’ (Superforecasting: the art and science of prediction. Penguin, Random House, 2015 [59: 77]). The elements of perspective taking, dialogue, synthesis, empathy, framing, ideation, prototyping, testing and learning makes design thinking a powerful approach in the counter-terrorism problem space. This chapter examines the counter-terrorism problem space leveraging the epidemiological approach to illustrate how Design thinking can be applied to develop analysis methodologies and intervention strategies to support counter-terrorism and resilience. It is about not only understanding the future but also influencing it.