The Power of Patterns

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns.  Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.  If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.”

Palahniuk (1999, p. 82)

A Quick Thought Exercise

What connects the following seven cases of deception?

1. In 2012 a new species of spider of the genus Cyclosa was discovered that uses debris from captured prey to construct a larger simulacrum of itself at the centre of its web. The spider can vibrate its web to make the simulacrum move, thereby performing a rudimentary form of puppetry (Drake, 2012; Torres, 2012).
2. In March 1862, in the face of an imminent attack by Unionist forces, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston strategically placed logs that had been painted black to resemble cannon around his fieldworks in Centreville, Virginia. The apparent defence of the works was sufficient to hold-off Unionist forces, allowing Johnston’s men to withdraw to the Rappahannock River (Mills & Mills, 2008, p. 108).
3. In 1999 during Operation Allied Force, the Serbian military fooled Coalition aircraft into attacking plywood and canvas targets that incorporated fires to simulate thermal signatures. False bridges were constructed from scrap metal to protect real bridges. Telephone poles and old truck wheels simulated artillery pieces. Milk crates mimicked anti-aircraft missile launchers. And wooden MiG-29 aircraft decoys were used to protect real fighter aircraft (RTO Task Group SCI-131/RTG-028, 2008).
4. Drug dealers regularly cut their products with cheaper materials such as the anaesthetic benzocaine, to bulk-up the expensive chemicals involved. Cutting agents mimic the look, texture and taste of the more expensive chemicals (Cole et al., 2010; The Telegraph, 2016).
5. In 2009, the hacking group 4Chan developed automated voting software that bypassed human authentication processes and voted their founder to become Time Person of the Year on the Time Inc website. They also gamed the order of the first 21 individuals listed in the poll, so that the first letter of their first names spelt-out the message “marble cake also the game” – a reference to one of their online discussion fora (Lamere, 2009).
6. The website crowdsondemand.com will, for a fee, provide sizeable and specialised crowds to support “protests, rallies, advocacy, audiences, PR stunts and political events.” (crowdsondemand.com, 2019)
7. And in the 1990 film ‘Home Alone’, eight-year-old Kevin defends his home against burglars by creating the illusion that his house is full of people. He uses manikins with ropes attached to their limbs, life-size cardboard cutouts of people stuck to a toy train that revolves around its track, and backlighting to create animated silhouettes resembling party guests at the house’s windows (Columbus, 1990).

Spotting Patterns

One of my early deception research studies investigated what the military might learn from studying deceptive practice in other domains.  The study reviewed deception in areas including magic and conjuring, animal deception, advertising and marketing, the psychic industry, scams and confidence tricks, politics, and historical cases of military deception.  Later work considered a significantly broader span of domains.

As in the above examples, on first consideration cases of deception appear to differ widely from one another. However, as the study progressed, I was struck repeatedly by a strong sense of déjà vu.  Cases of deception frequently seemed to mirror aspects of other cases drawn from entirely unrelated domains.  For example:

• A Plover simulating a broken wing to lure a fox away from its ground-nesting chicks has commonalities with the WWII Starfish decoys that lured enemy bombers away from dropping their bombs on densely populated UK cities.
• A software worm that records and later plays-back standard centrifuge data while it spins the devices out-of-control causing them to explode uses the same strategies employed in a card trick that simulates precognition of a spectator’s future choices.
• And Zodariidae spiders that mimic the look, behaviour and chemical properties of ants so that they can live amongst them while preying on them reflect strategies used by undercover police officers that infiltrate and collect evidence from inside a major criminal organisation.

Noticing such patterns gave rise to several useful lines of enquiry.

Learning From Patterns

“Trends, reoccurring events and circumstances. These are common ways we see patterns. Patterns are the laws of nature and life that present themselves in all disciplines of life — from the smallest microorganism to macrocosm. They manage the systems by which our universe operates. While patterns aren’t always apparent, they are continuous and autonomous.”

TEDxVCU (2017)

Having spotted a number of original patterns, whenever I came across a new one I would record it and give it a simple label such as “attract the target’s attention”, “simulate behaviour”, “swap the real for the false”, etc. As I gathered additional data on a pattern from a range of other sources, I began to better understand how it worked, and often refined and improved its label.

Early on, I noticed that specific patterns tended to occur near the start of a case of deception and manipulated a subset of psychological processes, such as affecting where the target was looking.  Other patterns occurred later in the case and manipulated a different subset of processes, for example, leading the target to formulate incorrect expectations.  Natural groupings of strategies, in turn, led me to construct a model of the psychological processes (and for cases of non-human deception, analogue processes) that deception manipulates to achieve its effects.

Over time it became clear that distinct strategies existed for manipulating:

• Where the target looks (or attends with their other sensory systems).
• What the target sees (or hears, smells, tastes, feels, etc.).
• What the target thinks is happening and consequently decides to do about it.
• What the target’s expectations are about the future.
• How the target feels about this, and
• What behaviour the target exhibits as a result.

These patterns have powerful explanatory utility but also turn-out to be helpful in a range of other ways.

Exploiting Patterns

“The way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful if one follows patterns.”

Seneca (65AD/1917, Letter 6. On Sharing Knowledge)

My work ended-up generating a generic model of the critical processes that any target (be it animal, individual human, organisation, software algorithm, etc.) uses to make sense of the world and generate action.  The model was named the ‘Six Block Model’ as a result of its six primary components, and whilst it was not specific to deception, it helped structure an understanding of the basis on which all deception operates.  Accompanying the model was a table of generic deception strategies (that became labelled Deception Gambits) for targeting and manipulating these different processes.

Initially, the model and strategies helped me to deconstruct and classify different cases of deception and enabled me to see the commonalities and differences between them.  I soon found myself viewing deception as an entirely generic phenomenon that transcends domain, target type, target scale, and intervening technologies.

Soon after, it became clear that the strategies, if packaged appropriately, could be provided to a deception practitioner to help them conceptualise and develop a deceptive plan, whilst also enabling them to become sneakier in the process!

Over several years the system was refined and expanded to incorporate additional processes for enhancing deceptive practice, including:

• Target Audience Analysis.
• Deception planning.
• Measurement of deceptive effect.
• Deception analytics.
• Counter-deception, and
• A system of checks and balances for scrutinising the necessity, legality, proportionality and ethics associated with a case of deception.

Each of these processes utilised the Six Block Model and the deception patterns I had identified.  And because the patterns originated within and recurred across a wide variety of different domains, the resultant system could be applied in any domain of deceptive practice, to fool any type and or scale of target that is operating within it.

An overview of the system, known as The Artifice System, can be found here.

By noticing, capturing, and appropriately packaging patterns, I found I was able to:

• Recognise and understand deceptive strategies when I saw them, thereby enabling analysis, deconstruction and learning about a historical case of deception.
• Better spot and recognise others’ use of deception, thereby establishing the basis of a system for counter-deception.
• Design deceptive action by using the strategies as underlying building blocks.
• Reuse past deception patterns to accelerate the design of new deceptive action.
• Use the associated pattern language to communicate economically my thinking about deception (concepts, intent, hypotheses, etc.) to others, especially in the context of a planning team.
• Graphically map and mark-up the components of a retrospective or prospective case of deception based on the pattern language, to support analytics and development of shared understanding within a planning team.
• Repeatedly use the components of the Six Block Model as a simple yet powerful structure for a host of other processes, including Planning, Target Audience Analysis, Measurement of Effect, etc.

Next, I shall address how patterns may be employed to support your professional practice.

Finding Patterns in Your Professional Practice

“Finding patterns is the essence of wisdom.”

Dennis Prager, US radio talk show host.

Patterns have been identified and used to underpin and guide professional practice in many different domains, including software development (Gamma, 1995), architecture (Chelliah et al., 2017), urban planning (Alexander et al., 1977), biology (Alon, 2006), knitting (Atherley, 2015), music composition (Schlechte, 2019), etc.  It is perhaps no surprise that patterns are also central to the professional practice of deception.

If you are keen to discover and exploit your own deceptive patterns (the novelty of which may be fundamental to creating competitive advantage in adversarial settings) you might wish to consider the following activities:

• Spot and collect deceptive patterns from outside of your primary domain of interest. For example, make a point of studying deceptive practices employed in domains such as animal deception (Stevens, 2016), marketing and advertising (Boush et al., 2009), cyberspace (Malin et al., 2017), art forgery (Hebborn, 2004), or military deception (Rothstein & Whaley, 2013), etc.  How could these patterns be applied to your domain of practice?
• Spot, collect and catalogue deceptive patterns in the world around you. For example, make a point of looking out for deception next time you visit a supermarket, watch an interview with a politician, see special effects employed in a film, are surprised by a big twist in a work of fiction, spot unusual patterning on an animal, observe somebody wearing makeup, etc.
• Watch a series like the Real Hustle, or films like The Sting, Catch Me If You Can, Catfish, Matchstick Men, or American Hustle, and spot patterns that recur across the different scams and confidence tricks portrayed.
• Think about where such patterns may exist in other domains and try to discover connections and similarities between domains.
• Read some beginner’s books on magic theory (e.g. Pogue, 1998), and practice tricks on your friends and family.  Consider the relationship between theory and practice and how this relationship works in other domains.  Explore how the principles and strategies of magic might help explain deceptive strategies used in other domains.
• For each case of deception that you encounter, think about:
  • Who or what is the target?
  • What psychological processes are being manipulated to facilitate the deception?
  • How are these processes manipulated?
  • What outcome does this achieve?
  • How could these principles be applied in your professional practice?
  • And how might these patterns help you to spot and counter deception if it is used against you?

We encounter many deceptive patterns every day.  If you keep your eyes (and mind) open, with practice they will become significantly easier to spot.  And with some applied thought, such patterns can almost always be reused in other settings.

Concerning the Thought Exercise at the start of this post, all the cases cited involve frugal simulation of inflated mass.  In each case, the deceiver attempts to inflate their size or presence using materials that are cheaper than the real thing, but that simulate it credibly to the target.

References

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., & Silverstein, M. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Alon, U. (2006). An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits: Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Atherley, K. (2015). The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Knitting Patterns: Learn to Write Patterns Others Can Knit. Blue Ash, OH: Interweave Press.

Boush, D. M., Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (2009). Deception In The Marketplace: The Psychology Of Deceptive Persuasion and Consumer Self-protection. New York: Routledge.

Chelliah, P. R., Subramanian, H., & Murali, A. (2017). Architectural Patterns: Uncover Essential Patterns in the Most Indispensable Realm of Enterprise Architecture: Packt Publishing Ltd.

Cole, C., Jones, L., McVeigh, J., Kicman, A., Syed, Q., & Bellis, M. A. (2010). Cut: A Guide to the Adulterants, Bulking Agents and Other Contaminants Found in Illicit Drugs.  Liverpool: Centre for Public Health, Faculty of Health and Applied Social Sciences, John Moores University.

Hughes, J. (Writer) & C. Columbus (Director). (1990). Home Alone. United States: 20th Century Fox.

crowdsondemand.com. (2019). Your home for protests, rallies, advocacy, audiences, PR stunts and political events.  Retrieved 09/12/2019 from https://crowdsondemand.com

Drake, N. (2012). Spider That Builds Its Own Spider Decoys Discovered. wired.com.  Retrieved 21/11/2016 from https://www.wired.com/2012/12/spider-building-spider/

Gamma, E. (1995). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Hebborn, E. (2004). The Art Forger’s Handbook. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.

Lamere, P. (2009). Inside the Precision Hack.  Retrieved 22/11/2016 from https://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/

Malin, C. H., Gudaitis, T., Holt, T. J., & Kilget, M. (2017). Deception in the Digital Age: Exploiting and Defending Human Targets Through Computer-Mediated Communications. London: Academic Press.

Mills, C. A., & Mills, A. L. (2008). Alexandria, 1861-1865. Mt. Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing.

Palahniuk, C. (1999). Survivor: A Novel (1st ed.). New York: Norton.

Pogue, D. (1998). Magic For Dummies. Foster City, CA: IDG Books.

Rothstein, H., & Whaley, B. (2013). The Art and Science of Military Deception. Massachusetts, USA: Artech House.

RTO Task Group SCI-131/RTG-028. (2008). Military Impact of Future Denial and Deception. (RTO Technical Report TR-SCI-131). NATO.

Schlechte, T. (2019). A Pattern Language For Composing Music. Pike Falls, Vermont: PfCM Press.

Seneca, L. A. (65AD/1917). Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (R. M. Gummere, Trans.). London: W. Heinemann

Stevens, M. (2016). Cheats and Deceits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

TEDxVCU. (2017).  Stated theme for the TEDx conference, held at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA., February 25th 2017.

The Telegraph. (2016). Chemicals dealer ‘sold more benzocaine to cocaine gang than GlaxoSmithKlein uses in a year’.  Retrieved 22/11/2016 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12171829/Chemicals-dealer-sold-more-benzocaine-to-cocaine-gang-than-GlaxoSmithKlein-uses-in-a-year.html

Torres, P. (2012). New Species of ‘Decoy’ Spider Likely Discovered At Tambopata Research Center.  Retrieved from http://blog.perunature.com/new-species-of-decoy-spider-likely-discovered-at-tambopata-research-center.html