Dynamic Red Queen Explains Patterns in Fatal Insurgent Attacks.

摘要

The Red Queen's notion. 'It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place' has been applied within evolutionary biology, politics and economics. We find that a generalized version in which an adaptive Red Queen (e.g. insurgency) sporadically edges ahead of a Blue King (e.g. military), explains the progress curves for fatal insurgent attacks against the coalition military within individual provinces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Remarkably regular mathematical relations emerge which suggest a prediction tau eta = tau Iota Eta - m log 10 tau lota +c for the timing of the eta' th future fatal day, and provide a common framework for understanding how insurgents fight in different regions. Our findings are consistent with a Darwinian selection hypothesis which favors a weak species which can adapt rapidly, and establish an unexpected conceptual connection to Physics through correlated walks.