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

  • Authors:
  • John Arquilla;David F. Ronfeldt

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

From the Publisher:Book Introduction: The fight for the future makes daily headlines. Its battlesare not between 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'sal-Qaeda, drug smuggling cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico, and militantanarchists like the Black Bloc that ran amok during the Battle of Seattle.Other protagonists are civil-society activists fighting for democracy and humanrights-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 aselude and evade. All feature network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy,and technology attuned to the information age. And, from the Intifadah to thedrug war, they are proving very hard to beat; some may actually be winning.This is the story we have to tell.Author Bios: DAVID F. RONFELDT (Ph.D., Political Science, Stanford University)is a senior social scientist at RAND whose research focus includes informationrevolution, netwar, cyberocracy, strategic swarming and the rise oftransnational networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). JOHN ARQUILLA(Ph.D., Political Science, Stanford University) is a RAND consultant and aprofessor of foreign policy at the United States Naval Postgraduate School inMonterey, California.