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 thesame place" has been applied within evolutionary biology, politics andeconomics. 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 coalitionmilitary within individual provinces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Remarkablyregular mathematical relations emerge which suggest a prediction formula forthe timing of the n'th future fatal day, and provide a common framework forunderstanding how insurgents fight in different regions. Our findings areconsistent with a Darwinian selection hypothesis which favors a weak specieswhich can adapt rapidly, and establish an unexpected conceptual connection tothe physics of correlated walks.