As an aside, in adversarial situations you need to be careful that weighted targetting based on superficial cues doesn’t merely give the enemy information on how to disproportionately avoid scrutiny.
Typically, this works to your advantage. If you scrutinize middle eastern travelers more, terrorist groups might decide to recruit white hijackers. But where are they going to find them? Wherever you think they might look, you can have CIA undercover agents trying to be hired.
The primary strength conspiracies have is small, close-knit groups. Anything you can do to force them to become larger or more diverse can help.
This probably works for terrorist groups. And actually explains why they recruit so many children of diplomats. (This suggests the CIA should try to recruit agents among them more, but that’s a problem if they’re already terrorists.)
But for groups that can be a lot more diverse, here’s a note to cops: If you see a group of high school students, most of whom are dark-skinned boys with long hairs and marijuana-related T-shirts, and one of whom is a prim-and-proper white girl with her nose constantly buried in a textbook, stop carding and searching the boys all the time. The girl has the weed, and thinks you’re insulting their intelligence.
Typically, this works to your advantage. If you scrutinize middle eastern travelers more, terrorist groups might decide to recruit white hijackers. But where are they going to find them? Wherever you think they might look, you can have CIA undercover agents trying to be hired.
The primary strength conspiracies have is small, close-knit groups. Anything you can do to force them to become larger or more diverse can help.
This probably works for terrorist groups. And actually explains why they recruit so many children of diplomats. (This suggests the CIA should try to recruit agents among them more, but that’s a problem if they’re already terrorists.)
But for groups that can be a lot more diverse, here’s a note to cops: If you see a group of high school students, most of whom are dark-skinned boys with long hairs and marijuana-related T-shirts, and one of whom is a prim-and-proper white girl with her nose constantly buried in a textbook, stop carding and searching the boys all the time. The girl has the weed, and thinks you’re insulting their intelligence.