Maryland (US), July 15 : The University of Maryland''s Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics has said that recent advances in computer science can be used by both the United States and India to neutralise terrorist attacks.

Its conclusions in two forthcoming papers, accepted for publication at the 2011 European Conference on Intelligence Security Informatics and the 2011 Open Source Intelligence Conference in September 2011, suggest that reining in terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba can be done only with concurrent action by the United States and India and a reduction in US aid to Pakistan.

The researchers led by Computer Science Professor V. S. Subrahmanian conducted a mathematical study of five entities - the US, India, the Pakistani military (including the Inter Services Intelligence agency), the Pakistani civilian government (not including the military or ISI), and Lashkar-e-Taiba, using Nash equilibria (named after Nobel-prize winning economist John Nash), found no entity can ``do better'''' without upsetting another agency.

"We did not find a single Nash equilibrium in which LeT exhibits good behavior in which the US expands financial aid to Pakistan," said Subrahmanian, adding that "This is consistent with the recent decision by the Obama administration to cut 800 million dollars in military aid to Pakistan."

Nevertheless, "this would not be sufficient to de-fang groups like LeT that are reportedly funded by Pakistan''s ISI intelligence agency", explained University of Maryland counter-terrorism analyst Aaron Mannes.

He added: "The recent court trial in Chicago of two alleged LeT operatives, David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, strongly suggests an ISI hand in the deadly Mumbai terrorist attack in November 2008."

"In addition to the results about trimming financial aid to Pakistan, we also found that there was not a single Nash equilibrium in which LeT exhibits good behavior in which both the US and India did not concurrently take either covert action against LeT and/or exercise coercive diplomacy toward Pakistan", said John Dickerson, a University of Maryland scientist who is also earning a doctorate at Carnegie-Mellon University.

"The results do not imply that the US and India need to coordinate actions - just that the actions need to occur over an overlapping period of time that is sufficiently long to convince both the Pakistani military and the LeT that terrorist actions will not pay", said Subrahmanian. (ANI)