I was in a counter-intelligence unit briefly and there was a mathemtician who spoke to us about the work they were doing to pick targets with the idea that if you can only out one person, who would be the most disruptive. You have all these interconnected but mostly isolated terrorist cells that don't know about each other except through a few people who may not be high up in the command but who are critical for the continuing cohesive existence of that terrorist group of cells and logistics etc.

So the military already was using math to pick targets, this is just the next logical step, albeit, scary as hell step.