Are engineers more likely to become terrorists?
June 14, 2009
An essay in the 13 June issue of New Scientist suggests that people who study engineering in college are more likely to become terrorists or extremists.
The authors of that essay are Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, who are currently working on a book scheduled for 2010 publication called Engineers of Jihad.
The article focuses especially on Islamic terrorism, but their research has broader implications. The article begins with data showing that demographic profiling was useless in Germany, where immediately after 9/11, they looked for terrorists among 8 million people, narrowing the pool by using the following characteristics:
-male
-age 18-40
-current or former student
-Muslim
-legally resident in Germany
-originating from one of 26 Islamic countries.
Then they added in potential to carry out terrorist attacks, such as a pilot's license; familiarity with potential targets; and studying the German language at the Goethe Institute. They ended up with 1689 individuals to investigate, and they did so, one by one. The result? Not a single threat!
But further study of extremists and terrorists worldwide turned up a surprising number of engineers. The authors think the finding is significant.
Their article, of course, has many more details that lead to this conjecture: "A lot of piecemeal evidence suggests that characteristics such as greater intolerance of ambiguity, a belief that society can run like clockwork, and dislike of democratic politics which involves compromise, are more common among engineers." This leads to a 3-4 times greater likelihood that a college educated terrorist is an engineer than for other graduates.
I don't know what to make of this. I've worked with plenty of engineers, and though they aren't as accepting of ambiguity as the physicists I've known, and they are more likely to be meticulous about schedules, I don't think that makes them more likely to go off the reservation.
Perhaps it makes more sense to postulate that people who are drawn to extremist views are also more likely to study engineering than science or other fields.
But whether there is cause or effect here, the correlation is sure to catch the eye of law enforcement officials.
I'd be interested in what other Science Blog readers make of this.
Fred Bortz
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Comments
For intelligence agencies and
October 15, 2009 by Anonymous, 5 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 45488
For intelligence agencies and the U.S. military, the main challenge is to understand the reasons for the group's resiliency and to figure out how to exploit its vulnerabilities, such as ideological rifts. While the threat of an attack with weapons of mass destruction always tops U.S. fears, there are other, perhaps more likely, scenarios that worry counterterrorism officials, including more low-tech attacks and possible cyberassaults. Article Directory
What is a terrorist?
June 15, 2009 by Anonymous, 22 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 37280
I wonder what definition they used for "terrorist"? The way governments use it, the definition is: Any outsider who uses violence to obtain their ends. An outside person or group who bombs a building, even if it is a military building like the pentagon, is a terrorist. A government which nukes or firebombs an entire city of civilians is not. (They simply declare the city a military target.)
With this sort of definition, of course engineers will predominate as terrorists. What other sort of private person could figure out how to make a bomb, an art history major? The desire may be just as prevalent, but the ability is lacking.
Re: What is a terrorist?
June 15, 2009 by Fred Bortz, 22 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 37282
The article answers this important question and comment in this way:
Hope this helps. (Again, note that the authors focus on Islamist extremists, but their conclusions apply more broadly.)
Fred Bortz
The engineers I know
June 15, 2009 by Anonymous, 22 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 37276
I know 3 engineers: Two are Ultra conservative republicans (extremist, no?), and the other is a marxist. I have always wondered about this phenomenon. Now we know the culprit for social idealism: Math!
engineers as terrorists
June 14, 2009 by Anonymous, 22 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 37268
In a certain way this makes sense, as you say engineers are drawn to absolutes which doesn't lend itself to tolerance.
http://alphadominance.com/
Humanity as a system ...
June 15, 2009 by Anonymous, 22 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 37272
I think they do have it backwards:
- Technology is an enabler. Since humanity parted from apes, tools are the enabler for the individual to do more with the rest of the planet than it could do with bare hands.
- As technology evolves, tools and technology hand more and more power to the individual over an increasing portion of the rest of the system. Pushing the red button may still have a few safety features, but what about bioweapons in third world garages or some dangerous nanotech?
- In fact technology helps to destabilize the system, since the system of humanity depends increasingly more fine grained on the sanity of individuals.
- Ingenuity of the invention does not impose control how technology is used with respect to the system of earth and humanity. It can be used for great benefit developing new vaccines or to drop nuclear bombs, e.g., on Japan.
- Engineers are just the first to construct and to use new tools, be it nuclear-, bio-, or nanotech. Once technology becomes ubiquitous enough for everyone to use, other people do follow.
educated people
September 21, 2009 by Anonymous, 8 weeks 5 days ago
Comment id: 44902
How ever, almost all third-world people taking on higher education will go to engineering, not "british poetry". So I guess engineers are under-represented, not over-. But the real point is that educated people are more likely to become terrorists than, say, poor farmers, even so they suffer less, are less oppressed, and should know better about the outer world.
In my country, many people
October 5, 2009 by Anonymous, 6 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 45249
In my country, many people choose to study in the Technology field as opposed to Engineering. The pay is of equivalent value, and the schooling is much easier.