During the past two weeks, market regulators across the world have been scanning their market surveillance systems for evidence of investors making financial gains from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Their interest lies in irregular trading which appears to have been done with prior knowledge of a resulting drop in airline and hotel stocks, in the hope that suspicious activity would provide leads to terrorists.

These investigations have raised two important questions: do the financial markets have a role to play in identifying extremist political groups which are trying to fund their regimes? If they do, what role does artificial intelligence play in identifying such activity and locating who is involved?