Towards Discovery of Environmental, Societal, and Individual Conditions Ripe for Emergence of USMV

Project Description

A minute fraction of society, consisting of a wide range of demographic characteristics, is driven to the point of conflict with society extreme enough to choose to perpetrate United States-based Mass Violence (USMV)[1]. The demographics of known past or potential attackers are not consistent enough to develop a working profile. With demographics and profiles non-specific and unreliable, resolution remains primarily reactionary rather than preventive. The most prevalent of the known traits is social isolation, yet a majority of young adults and teens report experiencing some form of loneliness or social isolation.[2] If the majority of individuals who report experiencing social isolation do not end up committing acts of USMV, then more needs to be uncovered about the role that social isolation plays in the emergence of USMV.

This study is a first phase toward development of a serious game[3] for the intent of eliciting new raw data as to the societal and structural factors that contribute to those experiencing social isolation to move in the direction of USMV. The goal is to engage subject area experts in scenario development and strategy to identify possible social, environmental, and individualistic factors that could lead to social isolation extreme enough to lead to acts of mass violence—that lead to volatile social isolation. In order to narrow down the potential factors, we need a baseline that subject matter experts (SMEs) believe to be primary factors or contributors. To gather SME feedback, the process of war-gaming[4] will be employed to place SMEs in potential scenarios to elicit feedback on variables, potential outcomes, expected mindsets, and similar in-action factors to be considered. This feedback, elicited through initial surveys, in-game discussions, role-play decisions, and post-game debriefing, will be used to compile an initial set of scenario and game-play options to be included in the initial serious game for simulated role-playing field research.

Background

Studies of mass violence at educational campuses have been increasing over the past few decades as cases continue to increase in frequency as well as death and injury rates. After numerous studies, databases, and analyses, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has determined “There is no one demographic profile of an active shooter.” (Addressing the Problem of the Active Shooter, n.d.) While much has been learned from these studies—‘close-to-boom’[5] pre-attack warning signs; active-shooter safety measures for students and staff; potential intervention methods for identified attackers—much is still left unknown for what conditions lead to the occurrence of these cases, why they continue to increase, and how to reduce their frequency amid unreliable profiles and demographics.

Even though there isn’t a reliable demographic profile, there are psychological and sociological traits significantly common across past attackers. These traits, however, are not causal in and of themselves, and are also not easily identifiable in a crowd of subjects, which means reliance on these traits can result in unacceptable levels of false positives and false negatives. FBI reports acknowledge that a “thorough threat assessment typically necessitates a holistic review of an individual of concern, including historical, clinical, and contextual factors” (Addressing the Problem of the Active Shooter, n.d.), and current intervention methods still rely on identification of a potential attacker prior to any actionable plan of prevention being feasible.

Research must then move away from the premise of a profile and rethink the bigger picture to ask what else needs to be considered. If social isolation is both a prominent yet unreliable indicator, what is and isn’t known about the role of social isolation in the development of individual conflict with society? Numerous studies, especially recent ones examining the role of COVID in social connectedness, have focused on increasing rates (before and during COVID) of reported social isolation and/or loneliness, especially among teens and young adults. (Achterbergh et al., 2020; Bellotti et al., 2021; Chu et al., 2020; Çiftçi et al., n.d.; Dean et al., 2021; Emerson et al., 2021; Giacco et al., 2022; Jacobs & Teicher, 1967; Le et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2019; Luchetti et al., 2020; McNamara et al., 2021; Negi et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2020; Rehman et al., 2021; Shilhav, 1984; Tso & Park, 2020; Vanja et al., 2022; White et al., 2020; Whitehouse et al., 2009; Zagic et al., 2022; Zavaleta et al., 2017) However, what has contributed to this isolation is largely speculative and survey-focused. Theories on the non-social nature of social media dominate these studies. There are two key problems with this focus. First, cases of USMV have been significantly increasing each decade since 1903. (Rosso) This is not to say that mass media and technology don’t currently play a role in USMV, but cases of socially isolated individuals committing acts of USMV have been regularly and rapidly increasing decades before the presence of social media and technology. Second, the effects of social and mass media are seen across the majority of teens and young adults, yet a significant majority of teens and young adults do not take part in USMV. So social media is not a prevalent causal factor, even though it may in the past four decades have been a contributing factor.

Existing literature is inconsistent on whether to use the term loneliness or the term social isolation. Definitions and measurements are also inconsistent, with some sources citing loneliness as a subjective perception and social isolation as a measurable rate of in-person contact, while other reports make no distinction between the terms or only recognize one. When a distinction is made, loneliness would be an emotional state reported by a research subject, and social isolation could be measured in hours of face-to-face contact with peers and social or familial groups. (Isolation’s Silent Role in the Teen Mental Health Crisis | Psychology Today, n.d.) However, loneliness as a perceived state does not account for some measurable conditions that could contribute to social isolation such as teasing, bullying, alternative cognition, and interpersonal difficulties (e.g., social awkwardness). In-person contact time (social non-isolation) could be reported, yet still be a factor in perceived loneliness due to the nature of the contact. Someone being bullied may have significant in-person contact with their peer group, but experience negative interactions that exacerbate conditions of social isolation. Acts of bullying could be objectively measured in terms of number of instances, level of threat (physical or mental) experienced, or rate of increase (number of instances, number of individuals, etc.). This same bullying would still fall under in-person (or virtual-in-person in the case of cyber bullying) contact (social non-isolation), but could still be subjectively reported as perceived isolation, in the sense that acts of bullying aim to emotionally and socially isolate one from a dominant peer group without necessarily reducing the in-person contact. It is possible for an individual to be regularly surrounded by peers and other members of society, yet still be both subjectively and measurably socially isolated. In this study, the term social isolation receives new attention as a more complex condition that includes conditions of feeling ostracized, isolated, and disconnected from one’s peer and/or support groups through self-imposed, other-imposed, situational, and structural forces both measurable and perceived. Differences between an individual’s expectations of social interaction compared to the nature and level of actual interaction can also play a role in the assessment, degree, and nature of social isolation.

The working definition for the purposes of this study employs the term social isolation to encompass situations in which, regardless of physical engagement and proximity with one’s social/societal environment, individuals experience conditions that contribute to both subjective perceptions and objective observations of personal disconnect with the society in their environment. The hypothesis being explored is that there is no profile of conditions or characteristics, but rather a possible set of models that could detail potential “perfect storm” layers of conditions that could push an individual towards USMV. The theory behind this hypothesis is that there are three levels of engagement and meaning making involved in the development of the USMV perfect storm: structural/societal pressures and limitations; peer group pressures and triggers; and individual dispositions, interpretations, histories, and social navigation.

Research Questions

Theoretical Framing

Drawing on subjective theories, the dynamics between individuals and social structures highlights how “individuals . . . develop theories on how the world and their own activities function” (Flick, 43) in pursuit of individual goals. Their level of understanding, degree of insight, framing perspectives and histories, and cognitive and emotional capabilities affect their development of adaptive and maladaptive theories on their role and position within the world. This complex matrix of understanding and interpretation also affect how they “apply and test these theories . . . and revise them if necessary.” (Flick, 44) It could also shed light on what could drive them to determine they’ve reached an end game.

This research is also framed by structural theories, examining how characteristics of U.S. culture and society may play a role in the development of interpretations and understandings of society and an individual’s place within society. Specifically, the work of David Graeber on economic structures explores how individuals are framed and positioned within society according to their financial capabilities and potential. (Graeber) Kate Manne adds an important dimension for the most notable demographic of perpetrators, the male population[6]. How do narratives of misogyny place pressures, expectations, and limitations of male understandings and self images in relation to society? There are two other areas needing additional literature review. First is the impact of technological advances and the technology industry practices on the perceived level of individual agency among users, which could connect to an increasing gap between science and technology fields and the everyday user. Second is the role of communication, information control, and misinformation, which in contemporary times has close ties to technology.

Focusing Questions

The following set of questions begin to help define the focus of the war-gaming. It is anticipated that this list of questions will be expanded and enhanced through discussion during the war-gaming.

• Social isolation is not an uncommon trait among teens and young adults, but is a primary and notable trait among past perpetrators of mass violence. What factors contribute to moving from common social isolation to a social isolation that contributes to one feeling in conflict with the larger society around them to the point of perceiving society as a threat (volatile social isolation)?
• How does social isolation shift from a conflict with the surrounding society to a need to inflict harm on that society (volatile social isolation)?
• What areas need to be considered? (social media, school environment, teacher-student dynamics, student-student dynamics, neighborhood pressures, family pressures, financial pressures, academic pressures, physical health, mental health)
• What are current assumptions about what contributes to mass violence, and where are the strengths and weaknesses of these assumptions?
• What causal evidence is missing from the current literature and theories?
• What do social inclusion and social isolation look like? How are they described?
• What factors appear to have no relevant effect?
• What narratives are present in writings of past perpetrators? What narrative traits might we need to keep an eye out for? What scenarios might contribute to prompting these narratives? Are these scenarios natural to the environments being explored (high schools and/or colleges)?

Some of these questions will be addressed during the war-gaming process, while others will be addressed through further literature review.

Justification within Conflict Studies

Within social research, not only conflict studies, it is common practice to focus on the majority. Whether analyzing data from surveys and quantitative data or compiling and analyzing narrative discourse and qualitative interviews, the goal is to find evidence of what is happening, where does the research lead us—what do the majority say of topic X? In cases such as USMV perpetrators, even though they are a minimal fraction of the overall U.S. population, research hones in on the representative subjects (past perpetrators) to understand who they are, what do these subjects as a group have in common, what is their profile? This is useful in developing an understanding of possible characteristics, but as we have seen in research on USMV perpetrators, the profiles are not consistent and do not provide adequate insight into how someone becomes a perpetrator of USMV or how to get ahead of individuals heading down this path. With significant comparison between perpetrators of USMV and extremism, suicide, radicalism, and terrorism, and as there are increasing incidents of ‘lone wolf’ agents, this limitation in research applies to several areas within conflict studies.

What would we learn if we focused more attention on the ways in which these isolated agents differed from the majority? Instead of isolating an identified group and studying them separately from the larger society, there could be valuable insight in broadening the scope to the surrounding society and asking questions regarding how and why the minority behaves differently from the majority. For the fraction of subjects in a survey who respond differently than the majority, what can be learned by focusing on those responses and asking why they are different?

Obviously there are some logistic hurdles involved. Research, for obvious reasons, likes to protect the identity and privacy of participants. It is an ethical move as well as one of practicality—participants are typically going to be more honest when they don’t need to worry about being identified. Even in qualitative research scenarios where in-person interviews are conducted, digging deeper into differences can escalate the risk to the participant. Additionally, responses from interviews could vary significantly from field observations of live-time actions, where an individual is responding to real threats and interactions rather than responding to hypothetical scenarios in the safety and distance of an interview room.

Ideally, research could observe individuals in real-time interaction to see how they respond to stimuli and what thoughts are being processed as they do this. Ethnographic research into what is behind the development of a perpetrator of USMV is unfathomable and unrealistic. The time and material investment in the hopes of happening across a potential case study would not be fundable or feasible. However, technological advances have provided a potential alternative. Simulated environments where participants can role-play in the relative safety of a virtual world provide an opportunity to both observe actions, reactions, and decision making in response to stimuli and scenarios, while also providing insights into thoughts and mental processing in the form of chat rooms and player narratives.

Methods and case selection

From War-Gaming to Serious Games

In order to develop a serious game that in its first iteration provides an ample and well thought out depiction of potential scenarios, environmental factors, and variables to simulate a high school or college atmosphere and its potential triggers, expert advice is needed to inform the development of the virtual world. In this first phase, a method called war-gaming will be employed to draw on the expertise of SMEs familiar with various sectors of teen and young adult male environments and mind sets.

As can be garnered from its title, war-gaming is a strategy activity designed to gain insight, experience, and education on the variables and policies of war.

“A wargame is a model, but a controlled model. The designer-developer team controls the data that will go into the game. The players control the various forces involved. The imponderable of war, the Clausewitzian friction factor, are also in there via randomized procedures which employ rolls of the dice or the drawing of event cards. This gives the chance to exploit opportunities as well as turn around potential disasters—all part of being in command, even if just of the intellectual processes.” (What Is Wargaming? – Decision Games, n.d.)

There have been more recent efforts to use the concept and structure of war-gaming to gain insight and understanding that can help prevent war and conflict.[7] SMEs from related areas—for example: policy, regional expertise, peace and conflict, military, international politics—gather in a room with a set of predetermined rules, parameters, and assigned identities to run through random and assigned scenarios. Scenarios are run and defined, and each identity group role plays by discussing their expected reactions, ramifications, responses, and potential outcomes. Ratings are provided by the players to assess whether tensions are rising or lowering. Groups then join in discussion with each other about the outcomes. Scenarios can build off each other, redirect the process, or introduce unanticipated responses. War-gaming provides a form of early peer review, cross reference, and clarifying of potential outcomes, needed observations, and scenarios of most effectiveness.

War gaming in this project aims to understand the stressors and destressors experienced by teen and young adult males that can contribute to social isolation from their peers, family, and community. Unlike the majority of conflict studies and war games that focus on understanding what happens during conflict, the purpose of war gaming here is to understand what variables may be most relevant in leading up to a conflict. The concept of conflict itself also requires clarification here. The conflict that is perceived by potential perpetrators of USMV may not be recognized or experienced by the individuals with which the potential perpetrator feels himself in conflict. What may appear to be everyday, unexceptional occurrences to his peers may seem to the potential perpetrator as escalating slights, offenses, impediments, and tensions. As such, the actions and reactions of peers, administrators, teachers, and community members may occur without any realization of their potential consequences.

Drawing on narratives of past USMV attacks, we can draw out some possible scenarios to include. One example comes from the Gang Lu shooting at the University of Iowa in November 1991. From reports of roommates, fellow students, and Lu’s own letters and writings, several contributing factors are highlighted. Some identified Lu as a loner, often getting into disputes with other students and exhibiting difficulty in dealing with conflicts or disagreements. On the other hand, a roommate had described Lu as someone who “invited friends to the apartment often . . . . He was not some typical loner” yet also “kept his personal life private.” (Kilen, n.d.) Another report describes how Lu felt guns would provide him a way to address grievances, implying he’d either had difficulty addressing problems without violence, or was unable to envision another way to address grievances. He’d been facing financial difficulties, and had recently been ‘overlooked’ for an award that he felt would have helped him financially and helped him find a job, which he’d been struggling to attain. Simultaneously, Lu was in jeopardy of his student visa expiring, requiring him to return to China. From these details we can see pressures from finances, career, academics, conflicts or disagreements with fellow students and faculty, and unknown sources of turning to weapons for addressing grievances. Several questions can be drawn from this scenario to address in a war gaming exercise:

1. What were Lu’s base characteristics that he had prior to this series of events? His education level? His personal support resources (family, friends, colleagues)? His financial capabilities? His cultural and personal expectations and pressures? External societal pressures?
2. Did something in particular change leading up to the shooting? What were those changes? Who contributed to those changes? Were these individuals involved in the shooting?
3. Did pre-existing problems escalate leading up to the shooting? How did they escalate?
4. Where were there points in the escalation when a change in circumstances could have de-escalated the emerging conflict?
   1. Were there points where individuals could have intervened?
   1. Were there points where a shift in resources (support, counseling, training, communication) could have aided de-escalation?
   1. Were there policy or procedure protocols that contributed to escalation or inhibited the possibility of intervention or de-escalation?
   1. What messaging contributed to the escalation? (social perceptions of conflict, guns/gun culture, gender expectations, academic standings . . .)

Any one of these situations alone—interpersonal conflicts, financial pressures, academic inadequacies, relocation concerns, and job insecurity—is not likely to be a sole trigger for violence on the scale of USMV. Several combined are likely to create a time of difficulty for most people, and for others could become overwhelming, possibly to the point of not being able to cope effectively. Similar scenarios play out for other case studies of USMV. Taking these similarities into account, a general profile of a potential perpetrator could be developed:

• Someone for whom interpersonal relations are difficult, demeaning, or threatening
• Someone who tends to not share many personal details or thoughts with others
• Someone for whom school and/or career pose notable difficulties
• Someone who faces difficulties in problem solving and coping skills
• Someone whose ambitions or desires are beyond their current capabilities (finances, access, career/hobby/educational skills, grades, experience, interpersonal skills, etc.)

In developing the profiles of other identities in the war game, SME feedback would be sought to help define the school administrator role, the teacher role, the local law enforcement role, and the peer role. Then the environment would be described to participants to provide them insight into the demographics of the school and neighborhood (income, industry and commerce, race, gender percentages, graduation rates, reports of bullying, number single-parent households, class sizes, community activities, etc.). This helps flesh out the type of environment in which the student profile is navigating life challenges. One or two primary goals would be provided for the student role, for example: engage in a relationship; pursue a hobby that requires expensive equipment; gain validation on a project’s results; receive a scholarship.

An initial scenario would then be provided (with roles noted with capitalization):

School is approaching spring break. The Student has been writing short stories for English class that he hopes to produce into anime and post online. The short stories contain radical political views that make the Teacher uncomfortable. The school’s Police presence has been alerted by the Administrator, who heard about the stories from the Teacher. As of this point, the Teacher has not yet provided feedback to the Student. What are possible actions and reactions from each role? Discuss with others in your role identity group, and provide the following:

• Expected reaction and action from your role identity
  • Expected reactions and actions from the other role identity groups
  • Rating from -5 > +5 as to whether each of the expected reactions would escalate (+) or de-escalate (-) conflict between the other identities and the Student

Share these with the groups when we resume group discussion. Based on reactions, actions, and ratings from other roles, return to discussion within your identity group to determine how these reactions and actions could affect your identity role and again provide the results in the bulleted list above.

At designated times during the exercise, new scenarios will be introduced to add complexity to the environment. Additionally, to allow for random events, dice rolls will determine whether new factors arise that were unanticipated, such as (but not limited to) the following:

• Student experiences bullying from x number students
• School budget cuts remove access to certain equipment
• Student discovers where the key to his dad’s gun cabinet is located
• Local police agency enacts a new neighborhood watch program in the Student’s neighborhood
• Another student steals money out of the Student’s locker/dorm room
• The Teacher faces a personal crisis at home
• The Administrator goes on leave and is either a) replaced by a temp, or b) has the role filled in by PT teacher

At the end of the run of scenarios, the groups will again resume conversation with each other to share results and discuss the following questions:

• Where were there points in the escalation when a change in circumstances could have de-escalated the emerging conflict?
• Were there points where individuals could have intervened?
• Were there points where a shift in resources (support, counseling, training, communication) could have aided de-escalation?
• Were there policy or procedure protocols that contributed to escalation or inhibited the possibility of intervention or de-escalation?
• What messaging contributed to the escalation? (social perceptions of conflict, guns/gun culture, gender expectations, academic standings . . .)

Multiple scenarios will be discussed to draw out various possible angles to explore as to what combinations of actions, reactions, and interpretations could contribute to interpersonal conflict escalating to the point of volatile social isolation, again with social isolation defined as a state in which regardless of physical engagement and proximity with one’s social/societal environment, individuals experience conditions that contribute to both subjective perceptions and objective observations of personal disconnect with the society in their environment. Inversely, this exercise is also expected to provide insight into what conditions, actions, and reactions could de-escalate interpersonal conflict.

This will be an iterative process both within the initial exercise and in future reflections on the exercise and additional insights gained along the way in current and future phases of the overall research. The current phase is part of the development process for an initial pilot of using war gaming and serious games as research tools for new, raw data to help fill in knowledge gaps currently facing research into how to stem the occurrence of USMV.

Translating this process to a research model, war-gaming provides a platform for bringing area experts related to USMV—such as economic/financial systems, misogyny, bullying, insecurity (cohort, peers, family, social standing, financial, political instability, social tensions/threats), communication (platform, being heard/not heard, misinformation), technology (increasing lack of agency), teen/young adult psychology, extremism—into conversation with each other in efforts to grasp and clarify the complexities and potential actions and responses to scenarios that may contribute to social isolation progressing to the point of volatile social isolation.

Results of the war gaming will provide insights critical to understanding the mitigating factors related to the emergence of USMV. Such insights will later inform the design and development of a serious game that can employ these scenarios, profiles, and ratings in role playing within the simulated environment. Players of the game will then experience much more real-to-life results and input, which improves the chances of valuable data from the game playing.

War-Gaming Environment and Conditions

The area of research for this project is focusing on high school or college level academic campuses because this is an area with ample and recent literature and research. For ease of access and in efforts to minimize costs and barriers, a local high school or the George Mason campus will be used as the model. Because the war-gaming process is designed to replicate the setting, it is not necessary to take place in the actual school, but it will be necessary to have as thorough an understanding of the environment as possible to be able to adequately represent it in the game. The activity can take place in any available and accessible conference or meeting room, including at a library, school, or hotel.

A single day of eight hours is anticipated, with the following outline of three to five scenarios played out over a simulated week:

1. [Morning] Set the scene: describe the setting, its demographics, the physical setting as well as cultural makeup
   1. Discover dynamics at play
   1. Introduce 1st scenario
   1. Play out possible actions
   1. Announce end of day 1 simulation
2. Either continue 1st scenario or introduce scenario 2
   1. Play out possible actions
   1. Announce end of day 2 simulation
3. [After mid-day break] Either continue 2nd scenario or introduce scenario 3
   1. Play out possible actions
   1. Announce end of day 3 simulation
4. Either continue 3rd scenario or introduce scenario 4
   1. Play out possible actions
   1. Announce end of day 4 simulation
5. [After afternoon break] Either introduce scenario 5 or determine end actions/results
6. Discuss results and outcomes across groups

Potential participants will be contacted and invited via email or phone outreach to SMEs both locally and nationally. Compensation preferences would be to provide lunch, drinks, and recognition in later papers and reports, if desired. There would also be an invitation to continue participation in later phases, presuming some participants may have pre-existing investment in similar research and efforts.

Data Analysis and Operational Definitions

Qualitative data gathering will consist of the following formats:

• Group discussion, explanations of moves and consequences
• Debriefing feedback (oral and written)
• Open-ended questions and moves (agency or lack of agency within simulation/scenarios)
• Ability to self-rank responses & motives, actions: further explication beyond numerical results/markings
• Ability to ad-lib
• Discussion at beginning of war game re: abstractions, formalizations, generalizations, idealizations

Quantitative data gathering will consist of the following formats:

• Numerical ranking of choices[8]
• Demographic considerations
• Scenario development (also qualitative)
• Preset options with rankings
• Generating and testing hypotheses to lead to ability to test in serious game setting

Methodological Obstacles, Challenges and Difficulties

While SMEs will provide valuable insights, they will for the most part not be representative of the demographic sought for participation in the future serious game research. As such, as initial engagement occurs with the to-be developed serious game, it is anticipated the results of the war-gaming will be amended, enhanced, and revised.

Anticipated Results

There are two primary areas of clarification desired and anticipated from the war-gaming process. First, through dialogue, role playing, and observations of reactions, it is expected the war-gaming will result in a clarified list of scenarios, potential responses, and additional inputs needed to develop an effective serious game for the purpose of gaining new raw data from teen and young adult male participants. Second, through rankings and discussion of ranking decisions, a metrics for determining whether actions in the game are escalating or deescalating conflict should begin to be developed through the war-gaming exercise.

Results of the war-gaming will be presented as detailed lists of criteria for the development of a serious game. As this phase only addresses initial SME feedback, and does not start to address the specifics of game development, there are bound to be additional criteria left unaddressed after the war-gaming process.

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[1] Incidents in which the intended consequence was large scale (four or more) harm or destruction to human lives randomly or semi-randomly, not isolated to a single family or specific and limited personal relations, regardless of the number of actual deaths.  Violent attack perpetrated by a non-terrorist, non-gang member, non-group-organized individual or individuals (less than four) in a space occupied by multiple numbers of citizens, where there is a great risk of “bystanders” being injured, intentionally or not, as a result of the violence. An attack by individual(s) on a sector of society. Points of individual violent conflict with society. (Rosso, 2019) The FBI has in recent years amended their definition of mass violence to be more in line with this definition, recognizing the importance of separating these incidents from gang violence, turf wars, family-based (isolated) violence, and violence related to other crimes (such as robbery). (Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021, n.d.)

[2] Percentages range from 35%-65%, depending on the definition of either loneliness or social isolation and the intent of the author(s). See the Background section for further discussion on these terms.

[3] Serious games are “games used for educational purposes in addition to providing entertainment.” (Addressing the Problem of the Active Shooter, n.d.) While serious games were initially used for the purposes of education, they show promise as research tools.

[4] “Wargames are analytic games that simulate aspects of warfare at the tactical, operational, or strategic level. They are used to examine warfighting concepts, train and educate commanders and analysts, explore scenarios, and assess how force planning and posture choices affect campaign outcomes.” (Monica & California 90401-3208, n.d.)

[5] In strategizing violent conflict scenarios, military and related entities refer to left-of-boom, right-of-boom, and boom to describe pre-conflict, post- or in-action-conflict, and initiation of conflict, respectively. Extending this terminology, close-to-boom refers to the moment after left-of-boom planning, but shortly prior to engaging in violence. (source: classified project engagement)

[6] Males account for over 90% of the perpetrators of USMV.

[7] From classified activity observation, November, 2022.

[8] On a rating scale of 1-5, rate each scenario and each variable as a ‘+’ toward escalation or ‘–‘ toward de-escalation—for example, +1 indicates expectation of small escalation, -1 indicates small expectation of de-escalation.