RAND Book; Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy"

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.rand.org/publications/news/releases/netwars.html

The book in .pdf: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/

News from RAND
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The Growing Power of Networks

The tragic events of September 11th made brutally clear that the fight for
the future is not between the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons
those of conventional armed forces. Rather, today's combatants come from
terrorist groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, or drug smuggling cartels
like those ravaging Colombia and Mexico. On the positive side are
non-violent, civil-society activists fighting for the environment,
democracy and human rights. What all have in common is that they operate in
small, dispersed units that can deploy nimbly-anywhere, anytime. They know
how to penetrate and disrupt, as well as elude and evade. They all feature
network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned
to the information age. And, from al-Qaeda to the Intifadah to the drug
war, they are proving very hard to beat...

Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, by John
Arquilla and David F. Ronfeldt, Editors, (RAND, 2001) examines this new
spectrum of conflict emerging in the wake of the information revolution.
Netwar includes conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals,
gangs, and ethnic extremists; and by civil-society activists (such as cyber
activists or WTO protestors) on the other. What distinguishes netwar is the
networked organizational structure of its practitioners-with many groups
actually being leaderless-and their quickness in coming together in
swarming attacks.

Completed shortly before terrorists attacked New York and Washington, the
volume includes an Afterword analyzing the Attack on America. The events of
September 11, 2001, tragically reinforced Arquilla and Ronfeldt's
conclusion that in order to confront this new type of conflict, it is
crucial for governments, military, and law enforcement to begin networking
themselves.

"Just as a half century ago, researchers at RAND sought to understand the
profound changes in strategy brought about by nuclear weapons and
intercontinental ballistic missiles," says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of
the world's foremost experts on terrorism and crime, "Arquilla and Ronfeldt
explore the strategic implications of new information technologies in the
latest installment of their seminal work... Networks and Netwars obliges us
to think in new ways."

In Networks and Netwars, the editors and their colleagues examine the major
instances of netwar that have occurred over the past several years-from
Osama bin Laden's networked terrorists to the Battle of Seattle's social
activists-and find, among other things, that netwars have generally been
successful from the protagonists' perspective.

The authors also find that, despite their diversity, all networks built for
waging netwar may be analyzed in terms of a common analytic framework.
There are five critical levels of theory and practice: the technological,
social, narrative, organizational, and doctrinal levels. A netwar actor
must get all five right to be fully effective. The most potent netwarriors
will not only be highly networked and have the capacity for mounting
"swarming" attacks, they will also be held together by strong social ties,
have secure communications technologies, and project a common "story" about
why they are together and what they need to do. Like Osama Bin Laden's
al-Qaeda, these are the most serious adversaries. But even those networks
that are weak on some levels may pose stiff challenges to their
nation-state adversaries.

With this in mind, it is necessary to go beyond simply diagnosing the
nature of the networked nonstate opponent in a given conflict. "A
particular challenge for the cumbersome American bureaucracy will be to
encourage deep, all-channel networking among the military, law enforcement,
and intelligence elements whose collaboration is crucial for achieving
success," Arquilla and Ronfeldt explain in the Afterword. "U.S. agencies
have been headed in this direction for years-in the areas of
counter-narcotics as well as counterterrorism-but interagency rivalries and
distrust have too often slowed progress."

Writers who focus on the technological aspects of netwar often miss the
point. As the editors point out, "At its heart, Netwar is far more about
organization and doctrine than it is about technology. The outcomes of
current and future netwars are bound to confirm this."

Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, and author of The
Changing Global Order, says "Arquilla and Ronfeldt are a rare breed:
strategic thinkers of the information age. In Networks and Netwars they
grasp an emerging reality still lost on those preoccupied with the
geostrategic balance of power: War in the future will be waged by
leaderless networks that can come together quickly out of cyberspace to
'swarm' an opponent. Like few others, they recognize that the flipside of
the celebrated global civil society born of the Internet is the 'uncivil
society' of terrorists and criminals who will use the same means to spread
havoc and instability."

"Rushing into an increasingly complex world, we need ways to probe the road
ahead, to find the quicksand and pitfalls before falling in," says David
Brin, author of The Postman, Earth, and The Transparent Society: Will
Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? "Arquilla and
Ronfeldt have taken on this hard task, searching for technological threats
to a society that has grown reliant on data-based infrastructure... In this
collection of cogent articles, by experts in the field of netwar, they
clarify some of the dangers that await us-and reveal possible ways to avoid
them. It's obviously an important and seminal work. I especially like their
analysis of the key features that enable groups to be effective in this new
arena of conflict."

Contents: Summary · The Advent of Netwar (Revisited) (John Arquilla and
David Ronfeldt) · The Networking of Terror (Michele Zanini, Sean J.A.
Edwards) · Transnational Criminal Networks (Phil Williams) · Gangs,
Hooligans, and Anarchists (John P. Sullivan) · Networking Dissent: Cyber
Activists Promote Democracy in Burma (Tiffany Danitz, Warren P. Strobel) ·
Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar (Ronfeldt, Arquilla)
· Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest (Paul de Armond) · Activism,
Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism (Dorothy E. Denning) · The Structure of
Social Movements: Environmental Activism (Luther P. Gerlach) · What Next
for Networks and Netwars (Ronfeldt, Arquilla) · Afterword (September 2001)
(Arquilla, Ronfeldt)

About the Editors:

John Arquilla is associate professor of defense analysis at the Naval
Postgraduate School and a consultant to RAND.

David Ronfeldt is a senior social scientist working in the International
Policy and Security Group at RAND. Their publications include In Athena's
Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (RAND, 1997), The
Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico (RAND, 1998), The Emergence of
Noopolitik (RAND, 1999), and Swarming and the Future of Conflict (RAND,
2000). They are also co-authors of numerous titles, including Countering
the New Terrorism (RAND, 1999).

About the Contributors:

Paul de Armond is director of the Public Good Project, a research and
education network based in Washington State that studies militant movements.

Tiffany Danitz is a journalist and a staff writer for stateline.org, an
on-line news service that covers politics in the state legislatures.
Earlier, she wrote extensively about national and international politics as
a staff writer for Insight Magazine and The Washington Times.

Dorothy Denning is professor of computer science at Georgetown University
and author of Cryptography and Data Security and Information Warfare and
Security.

Sean Edwards is a doctoral fellow at the RAND Graduate School and author of
Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present, Future.

Luther Gerlach is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of
Minnesota. He is co-author of People, Power, Change: Movements of Social
Transformation and has written numerous articles on social movements and
environmental risks.

Warren Strobel is a journalist who has worked at The Washington Times, U.S.
News and World Report, and is currently with the Knight Ridder News
Service. He has written widely about international affairs.

John Sullivan is a sergeant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. A
specialist in terrorism, conflict disaster, urban operations, and police
studies, he is editor of Transit Policing and cofounder of the Terrorism
Early Warning (TEW) Group.

Phil Williams is professor of international affairs at the University of
Pittsburgh and director of the Ridgway Center for International and
Security Studies. He is a leading authority on transnational criminal
networks.

Michele Zanini is a doctoral fellow at the RAND Graduate School and has
written about information-age terrorism, NATO strategy in the Balkans and
Mediterranean, and European defense planning.

Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Editors
380 pages · paperback · ISBN: 0-8330-3030-2 · $25.00
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2001
Available at bookstores; from National Book Network (800) 462-6420; or
directly from RAND. Call RAND at (310) 451-7002, or toll free (877)
584-8642 in the U.S. Website: www.rand.org.

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



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