News from RAND Contact: John Warren RAND Tel: 310-393-0411, ext. 6293 Fax: 310-451-6996 Email: jwarren@rand.org http://www.rand.org RAND 1700 Main Street P.O. Box 2138 Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street Arlington VA 22202-5050 703-413-1100 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... http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/ 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 7 The Advent of Netwar (Revisited) (John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt) 7 The Networking of Terror (Michele Zanini, Sean J.A. Edwards) 7 Transnational Criminal Networks (Phil Williams) 7 Gangs, Hooligans, and Anarchists (John P. Sullivan) 7 Networking Dissent: Cyber Activists Promote Democracy in Burma (Tiffany Danitz, Warren P. Strobel) 7 Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar (Ronfeldt, Arquilla) 7 Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest (Paul de Armond) 7 Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism (Dorothy E. Denning) 7 The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism (Luther P. Gerlach) 7 What Next for Networks and Netwars (Ronfeldt, Arquilla) 7 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 7 paperback 7 ISBN: 0-8330-3030-2 7 $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. ## ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. 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