Violence magnitude hierarchy:
- Forces armed with weapons of mass destruction
- Nation-state armed forces (non-WMD)
- Paramilitary forces, militias, non-state actors, and other organizations that employ military techniques, tactics, procedures, and technologies, and generally hold territory in their own right
- Internal security forces such as police forces, generally focusing on selected applications of force
- Organized crime / private security forces
- Cabals and small groups or cells such as a typical Western jihadi outfit
- Individuals
When you have a need and can’t satisfy it, possible causes:
- Basic resource gap – you have measured, and you have no precursors to any correlation that can satisfy the need, and don’t think that there is a feasible way to acquire the resources or make better use of the ones you have
- Measurement gap – you haven’t measured, and because you haven’t measured, you have no known precursors to any known correlation that can satisfy the need, or even any candidates
- Research gap – you don’t know how to exploit or transport the basic resources and the correlations that you suspect may be able to satisfy the need
- Procured resource/capital gap – you know how to exploit or transport the resources, but you don’t have any claim to the resources themselves, or to necessary capital such as fertilizer, tools, or trucks, in quantities necessary to satisfy the need under a competent allocation scheme
- Available resource/capital gap – resources and capital are in transport, or you have the tools to do the job, but they are in use, broken and requiring routine repair or maintenance, hence not immediately available
- Interdiction gap – precursor correlations are interrupted or changed by the influence of actors such as natural disasters and armed forces
Stereotypical measures of effectiveness (in rough order of usual effort to perform):
— Full process validation
— Risk-based sub-process testing
— End-product testing
— Sample testing
— Model testing
— End-user reporting
— Data mining/statistical analysis indirect factors that predict reliability
— Expert opinion
— Non-expert opinion
— No measurement at all