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

xiv, 375, [3] pages. Footnotes. John Arquilla (born 1954) is an American analyst and academic of international relations. From 1989 Arquilla also worked as analyst for RAND. In 1993 he joined the faculty of the US Naval Postgraduate School, where he has since taught courses in national security affairs and defense analysis, while keeping his post at Rand till 2003. Arquilla worked as a consultant to General Norman Schwarzkopf during Operation Desert Storm (1991), as part of a group of RAND analysts assigned to him. During the Kosovo War (1998-1999) he assisted United States Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre on international information strategy. During the George W. Bush administration, Arquilla was one of many advisors to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (in office 2001-2006), who like Arquilla is an admirer of Andrew Marshall's RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs). David F. Ronfeldt spent 30+ years at RAND. He has worked mainly on ideas about information-age modes of conflict (e.g., cyberwar, netwar, swarming) and principles for cooperation (e.g., guarded openness, noopolitik). He is a co-author (mainly with John Arquilla) of In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (1997), The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico (1998), Countering the New Terrorism (1998), The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy (1999), Swarming and the Future of Conflict (2000), and Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (2001). 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 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.…