Intrusion of AI and deep neural networks opened new perspectives in detecting terrorism

Over the past few years, terrorist attacks have been throwing challenging dimensions to global security. Even though when international communities and nations across the world are trying to put an end to it, malicious groups still find a way out. However, emerging AI technologies make their part of the contribution to combat terrorism.

Extremism has drastically increased in recent years. Terrorists from across the borders entering India are often exploiting weaknesses in border infrastructure. Except for the remarkable 9/11 attack in the US, and Mumbai and Pulwama attack in India, there are a bunch of other small massacres that killed hundreds of people and security personnel. Nations like Afghanistan and Syria are a constant resort for terrorist's anger. The incident of Taliban attacking a south district of Afghanistan named Helmand and killing more than a dozen people is the most contemporary state of terrorism in the region.

However, as the instigating controversies linger here and there in every nation, it is time for technology to take a head-on at the chaos. When we take India as a nation fighting against terrorism using technology, the country is at a moderate state and is doing fine.

AI Can Be a Solution for Raging Terrorism

AI is a tool that carries out functionalities encoded in them, which are inherited from the intelligence of their human programmers. However, with the correct set of data, these AI engines can be trained to learn to identify patterns and information which may be humanly impossible, especially while working with huge digital database moving at a high data rate.

The existing simple technologies have eased the information access of terrorists through surveillance cameras, satellite data, drones, wearables, manual analysis of such big and diverse data to extract strategic knowledge. But these are not enough to wipe out terrorism. Ultimately, the intrusion of AI and the breakthrough of deep neural networks opened a new perspective for providing such solutions with human-grade accuracy.

For India, terrorism is not a new threat. However, the continuous increase in terrorist attacks has triggered a quench for a technological solution. As the terrorists and organizations expand in the new era through technology by transmitting information on the web and collecting funds from cyber attacks, nations across the globe also embraced AI features to fight against extremism. Some of the popular tools used in the process are facial recognition, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and social network analysis. Here are the some use cases

• Artificial Neural Network (ANN)- ANNwith a feed-forward backpropagation network is establishing a high degree of certainty in various deceptive behavior patterns. These help authorities to extensively identify terrorists.

• Social network analysis- This tool is particularly suitable for analyzing terrorist networks since they take relationships into account, rather than only attributes, which are otherwise difficult to obtain for covert networks.

• Facial recognition system- It identifies the whitelisted or blacklisted people by referring to the database of facial features of people stored in advance.

Here are some of the other AI tools that track down terrorists

Machine Learning: The prediction and analysis of big data using machine learning and predictive framework can be integrated with the GIS system to identify the exact location of the suspicious attempts by embarking the border of each region. Machine Learning can read the audio and video of each frame, segment into the relevant bucket and notify the one which gets into the red bucket. The analytics as a part of Machine Learning can not only predict the attack, can also respond to the attacks on a real-time basis. The AI platform can immediately trigger an alarm or notify the concerned official to take action on exigency.

Intelligent Transport Management System: The technology acts for the moving vehicles to track down the movement of terrorists. Intelligent transport management system triggers an alarm and notifies officials if a suspicious vehicle travels in the wrong direction. The technology also sends an alert when it detects a vehicle with a fake number plate.

Edge Analysis: Edge analysis processes the raw data to the insightful information at each of the junctions or edge notes. The data needn't be diverting to the central computation system and thus eliminating the huge thirst on the bandwidth.

Various countries offer tech solutions for terror issues

India has established a wide range of surveillance and data gathering tools to keep a track on malicious activities. Through database-centric schemes like National Intelligence (NATGRID), Network Traffic Analysis Systems (CCTNS), law enforcement agencies have achieved a centralised Lawful Intercept and Monitoring (LIM) system.

Taranis drones are being developed in the UK to fight terrorism. The unmanned combat aerial vehicle is expected to be fully operational by 2030. The drones are capable of replacing the human-piloted Tornado GR4 fighter planes.

Other countries including the United States and Russia are progressing robotic tanks that can operate autonomously. It can also be remotely controlled. The US has announced the initiative for an autonomous warship in 2016. The sea vehicle is expected to have offensive capabilities including anti-submarine weaponry. South Korea uses a Samsung SGR-A1 sentry gun that is supposedly capable of firing autonomously to guard its border.

Social Media in Flagging Unusual Posts

Social media platforms have taken centre stage in the tech era. However, the echoing of fake news and misinformation is turning to be a threat to national security. Facebook has recently announced that the platform is using AI to find and remove terrorism-related content from social media. Facebook uses image recognition technology to identify and prevent photos and videos of known terrorists from circulating in other accounts. The company also suggested it could use machine-learning algorithms to look for patterns in terrorist propaganda, so it could more swiftly remove it from the newsfeeds of others. These anti-terror efforts would extend to other platforms Facebook owns including WhatsApp and Instagram. Facebook partnered with other tech companies including Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube to create an industry database that documents the digital fingerprints of terrorist organizations.