Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

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Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

Ebook - Computers & Internet

Edited by: John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Rand Corporation, January 2002

"... A useful collection of pieces on how contemporary communications shape nontraditional forms of warfare." Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002

"Arquilla and Ronfeldt are a rare breed: strategic thinkers of the information age." Nathan Gardels, New Perspectives Quarterly

Netwar-like cyberwar-describes a new spectrum of conflict that is 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. To confront this new type of conflict, it is crucial for governments, military, and law enforcement to begin networking themselves.

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From the Publisher:

The fight for the future makes daily headlines. Its battles are notbetween the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons the large,expensive tanks, planes and fleets of regular armed forces. Rather, thecombatants come from bomb-making terrorist groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, drug smuggling cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico, and militant anarchists like the Black Bloc that ran amok during the Battle of Seattle. Other protagonists are civil-society activists fighting fordemocracy and human rights-from Burma to the Balkans. What all have incommon is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deployniimbly-anywhere, anytime. They know how to penetrate and disrupt, as well as elude and evade. All feature network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. And, from the Intifadah to the drug war, they are proving very hard to beat; some may actually be winning. This is the story we have to tell.

About the Author:

DAVID F. RONFELDT (Ph.D., Political Science, Stanford University) is a senior social scientist at RAND whose research focus includes information revolution, netwar, cyberocracy, strategic swarming and the rise of transnational networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

JOHN ARQUILLA (Ph.D., Political Science, Stanford University) is a RAND consultant and a professor of foreign policy at the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

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