Sandeep has previously blogged about the problems with torture as a mechanism for extracting information from the unwilling. As with any incentive mechanism, torture works by promising a reward in exchange for information. In the case of torture, the “reward” is no more torture.
Sandeep focused on one problem with this. This works only if the torturer will actually carry out his promise to stop torturing once the information is given. But once the information is given the torturer now knows he has a real terrorist and in fact a terrorist with valuable information. This will lead to more torture (for more information) not less. Unless the torturers have some way to tie their hands and stop torturing after a few tidbits of information, the captive soon figures out that there is no incentive to talk and stops talking. A well-trained terrorist knows this from the beginning and never talks.
Let me point out yet another problem with torture. This one cannot be solved even by enabling the torturers to commit to an incentive scheme.
The very nature of an incentive scheme is that it treats different people differently. To be effective, torture has to treat the innocent different than the guilty. But not in the way you might guess.
Before we commence torturing we don’t know in advance what information the captive has, and indeed we don’t know for sure that he is a terrorist at all, even though we might be pretty confident. A captive who really has no information at all is not going to talk. Or if he does he is not going to give any valuable information, no matter how much he would like to squeal and stop the torture.
And of course the true terrorist knows that we don’t know for sure that he is a terrorist. He would like to pretend that he has no information in hopes that we will conclude he is innocnent and stop torturing him. Therefore the torture must ensure that the captive, if he is indeed an informed terrorist, won’t get away with this. With torture as the incentive mechanism, the only way to do this is to commit to torture for an unbearably long time if the captive doesn’t talk.
And this leads us to the problem. In the face of this, the truly informed terrorist begins talking right away in order to avoid the torture. The truly innocent captive cannot do that no matter how much he would like to. And so torture, if it is effective at all, necessarily inflicts unbearable suffering on the innocent and very little suffering on the actual terrorists.
Cheap Talk 
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May 20, 2009 at 10:16 am
michael webster
Frederick Forsyth, in The Fist of God, relates a story which gives a strategic answer to both of your objections.
Two American fighter pilots have bombed an Iraqi “junk pile” in the desert. The American pilots were briefed that it was manufacturing poison for delivery by missiles. Actually, it hides a large cannon designed for a single shot at Israel, with a nuclear payload.
The two pilots are beaten, but say nothing. The Iraqi’s need to break both men and have their stories corroborate.
Finally, the chief torturer tells the navigator: “All right, Flight Lieutenant, for you it is over. No more punishment. … But your friend is not so lucky. He is dying now. So we can take him to the hospital, clean white sheets, doctors, everything he needs; or we can finish the job. Your choice, when you tell us, we will stop and rush him to the hospital.”
The navigator screams in pain, heard by the lieutenant who, after holding out admirably, spits out “Stop you bastards, it was an ammunition dump for poison gas …”
I offer this as only a strategic observation, not a legal or moral recommendation.
May 20, 2009 at 10:50 am
jeff
Great story! thanks.
May 20, 2009 at 11:10 am
michael webster
The Forsyth story is an example of a set of strategic problems involving the use of confidential information, or information once disclosed may not have any value to the discloser unless an enforceable agreement is in place prior to the disclosure.
A good example of this problem is to be found in The Manager as Negotiator and the discussion of the Intellectual Property lawsuit.
May 20, 2009 at 9:09 pm
John Moore
The scenarios assume that the terrorists are rational actors. However, even the mildest of techniques are designed to hamper rationality – sleep deprivation, blindfolding, varying meal times, physical stress all chip away at it. The tortured is not even close to being rational after awhile, which is why game theory doesn’t work as well.
When I went through SERE school many years ago, we were taught that not only would we break, but that we would give up classified information. The lessons were not how to never talk, but how to deal with the overall situation – such as when you have withstood a fair amount of abuse and a fellow prisoner talks, or when you inevitably break and do things you will be terribly ashamed of.