Video games could help identify security threats

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The government is spending millions of dollars to determine whether video games can be designed as instructional tools for intelligence analysts, who help compile reports that U.S. officials use to identify potential threats from emerging foreign powers.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), research arm of the director of national intelligence, is coordinating the effort by hiring some of the nation’s largest defense contracting companies. The latest contract, a $9.1 million project awarded to a team led by Boeing Co. for work through December 2015, was issued in April through the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Some experts who have examined past failures of intelligence analysis have concluded that mistakes made as a result of cognitive bias were among the root causes, (Cherreka) Montgomery (an IARPA spokeswoman) said. Improving on that performance is a key for the intelligence community as a whole, she said.

Other research with similar goals is under way. Mary Fendley, a Wright State University researcher in human factors engineering, said she designed a process through an Air Force Research Laboratory-supported project to help analysts examining images from intelligence sources to correct for cognitive biases.

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