Warlords, Inc.

Combining path-breaking research and analysis from leading political scientists, advisors to heads of state, and award-winning academics, Warlords, Inc. pulls back the curtain on the secretive world of drug cartels and violent insurgencies, revealing their inner workings and implications for a world driven by unrelenting change and growing political uncertainty. These essays show how, as the complexities of modern geopolitical pressures mount, the world's elaborate but fragile political systems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to breakdown and deliberate disruption. The authors demonstrate that as infrastructures such as IT networks, global supply chains, and financial markets become increasingly volatile, the stability of entire populations hangs in the balance.
            Warlords, Inc. traces the evolution of forces that are reshaping the future of the geopolitical landscape:  Mexican drug cartels, revolts in the Middle East and Africa, military conflicts in Eastern Europe, the growth of slums and street gangs in India, and the proliferation of cyber-attacks and drone warfare. The contributors demonstrate how the underworld of the global economy thrives, how it disrupts and maintains power, and why, looking toward the future, we should all be paying attention. 


CONTENTS
1. Of Warlords and Rodeos: What Happens When Nothing Works?
2. Social and Economic Collapse: Lessons from History and Complexity
3. Innovation, Deviation and Development: Warlords and Proto-State Provision
4. Sovereignty, Criminal Insurgency, & Drug Cartels: The Rise of a Post-State Society
5. From Patronage Politics to Predatory States:Crime and Governance in Africa
6. Warlord Governance: Transition Towards, or Coexistence with, the State?
7. 5GW: Into the Heart of Darkness
8. Weaponizing Capitalism: The Naxals of India
9. Mexico's Criminal Organizations: Weakness in Their Complexity, Strength in Their Evolution 
10. The Politics of a Post-Climate-Change World: Pyongyang, Puntland, or Portland?
11. Bringing the End of War to the Global Badlands
12. The White Hats: A Multitude of Citizens
13. Beyond Survival: A Short Course in Pioneering Responses to Present (and Future) Crises

ANDREW TRABULSI is a consultant and entrepreneur who focuses on technology and economic development policy. Based in San Francisco, his work and research has included technology capacity building with indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest, community development work with the Federal Reserve Bank, innovation consulting with Deloitte LLP, and analysis of the REDD+ carbon finance programme. NOAH RAFORD works as an advisor to the United Arab Emirates Prime Minister's Office, where he provides policy and strategy advice on a range of special projects. Previously he helped design, develop and manage the nation's first foresight and scenario planning unit. He has consulted with governments, NGOs and private corporations around the world on a range of issues related to foresight, urbanism, risk, governance, policy, and strategy.