How to Predict Peaceful Revolutions

The U.S. government used a computer model to predict political upheaval in 150 countries. After the Arab Spring and some of the color revolutions, they were flummoxed by how well it worked. If we train a model to look for a particular kind of event, it's not going to do well looking for other events. So all of these models are only as good as your precision in identifying what you want to study.