Old Madness,
New Methods

Terrorism Evolves Toward "Netwar"

Terrorism will continue to appeal to its perpetrators for mainly three age-old reasons. First, terrorism is a weapon of the weak; it appeals to racist militias, religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and other minorities who cannot match the military might of their "oppressors." Second, terrorism is a way to assert identity and command attention; as such, it is an end in itself. Third, terrorism is appealing, especially to those with a religious fervor, as an expedient way to achieve a new future order if only by wrecking the present.

The authors outline emerging changes in organization, strategy, and technology that typify the "new terrorism" of the information age:

• Organization. Terrorists will move from traditional hierarchical groups toward more flexible network forms of organization. "Great man" leaderships will give way to "flatter," decentralized designs. More effort will go into building transnationally networked groups than stand-alone groups.

• Strategy. Some terrorist groups, with newly acquired capabilities for lethal acts, are already moving to a war paradigm" of attacking U.S. military forces and assets. For other terrorists, destruction of physical targets may become less an objective than disruption of information infrastructures. In the latter case, dangers will increase as terrorists move beyond isolated acts of disruption toward campaigns based on "swarming" a target, even a society, with multiple "attacks" from all directions.

• Technology. Terrorists will become increasingly dependent on advanced information technologies not only for offensive and defensive purposes but also to support their own organizations. Despite widespread speculation about terrorists using cyberspace warfare to take "the Net" down, they may have stronger reasons for keeping it up--e.g., to spread their message and to communicate with one another.

The authors weigh the implications for the U.S. Air Force. Beyond outlining some offensive and defensive steps the air force can take to fight information-age terrorism, the authors propose that a key in the fight will be the creation of interorganizational networks within the U.S. military and government, on the grounds that it will take networks to fight networks.

The Emergence of Netwar

Netwar refers to an emerging mode of crime and conflict, short of traditional war, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related strategies and technologies attuned to the information age. These protagonists are likely to consist of small, dispersed groups who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an internetted manner, without a precise central command.

Various groups across the spectrum of crime and conflict are evolving in this direction. Netwar is about the Middle East's Hamas more than the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mexico's Zapatistas more than Cuba's Fidelistas, and America's Christian Patriot movement more than the Ku Klux Klan. Netwar is also about the Asian Triads more than the Sicilian Mafia, and Chicago's "Gangsta Disciples" more than the Al Capone Gang.

The spectrum includes familiar adversaries who are modifying their methods to take advantage of networked designs: transnational terrorist groups, transnational crime syndicates, black-market proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, fundamentalist and ethnonationalist movements, smugglers of migrants and of black-market goods, pirates of intellectual property, high-seas pirates, urban gangs, back-country militias, and militant single-issue groups in the United States. The spectrum also includes a new generation of radicals and activists who are just beginning to create information-age ideologies, in which identities and loyalties may shift from the nation-state to the transnational level of "global civil society." Other new actors, such as anarchistic and nihilistic leagues of computer-hacking "cyboteurs," may also practice netwar.

CORBIS/BETTMANN/AFP

Although not terrorists, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, shown here on their way to discuss the peace process with the Mexican government in November 1998, have demonstrated the advantages of a network form of organization. Since January 1994, the Zapatistas have pressed demands for more rights for Mexican Indians.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE PHOTO

Aerial photograph identifies the remote Zhawar Kili Al-Badr Camp in Afghanistan, one of the Arab Afghan terrorist training camps targeted by U.S. military strikes on August 20, 1998.

• The chain network, as in a smuggling chain, where people, goods, or information move along a line of separated contacts and where end-to-end communication must travel through the intermediate nodes.

• The star, hub, or wheel network, as in a terrorist syndicate or a cartel structure, where a set of actors is tied to a central node or actor and all must go through that node to communicate and coordinate with each other.

• The all-channel network, as in a collaborative network of militant small groups, in which every group or node is connected to every other (see figure).

The all-channel design has unusual strengths for both offense and defense. For offense, the design is adaptable, flexible, and versatile, especially for "swarming," which occurs when the dispersed nodes converge on a target from multiple directions. The overall aim of swarming is the "sustainable pulsing" of repeated attacks that coalesce rapidly and stealthily on a target, then separate and redisperse, immediately ready to recombine for a new pulse.

For defense, all-channel networks tend to be diverse and redundant, making them robust and resilient. They can be difficult to crack and defeat as a whole, and they may defy counterleadership targeting. Moreover, the deniability built into the network affords it the option of simply absorbing a number of attacks on distributed nodes, leading the attacker to believe the network has been harmed when, in fact, it remains viable and is seeking new opportunities for tactical surprise.

Given the nature of netwar, the authors propose three counternetwar principles:

• Hierarchies have difficulty fighting networks. Examples include the failure of government attempts to defeat transnational drug cartels, as in Colombia; the persistence of religious revivalist movements in the face of unremitting state opposition, as in Algeria; and the Zapatista movement in Mexico, which shows that social netwar can put a democratizing autocracy on the defensive and pressure it to continue adopting reforms.

• It takes networks to fight networks. To defend against netwar, governments might have to develop interagency approaches involving networked structures. The challenge will be to blend hierarchies with networks, retaining enough authority to enforce adherence to networked processes. The U.S. Counterterrorist Center, based at the CIA, is a promising effort to establish an interagency network. Its success may depend on the strength of links made with the military and with other institutions outside the intelligence community.

• Whoever masters the network form first and best will gain major advantages. In these early decades of the information age, adversaries who have adopted networking (whether they are criminals, terrorists, or peaceful social activists) are enjoying an increase in their power relative to state agencies.

Netwar in the Middle East

Israeli and Western agencies have waged successful counterterrorism campaigns against the traditional, more bureaucratic groups. Meanwhile, the newer and less hierarchical groups--Hamas, the Arab Afghans, Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, and the Egyptian Islamic Group--have become the most active organizations in and around the Middle East.

Even though bin Laden finances Arab Afghan activities and directs some operations, he apparently does not command and control all operations. Rather, he coordinates and supports several dispersed activities. He represents a key node in this network, but any actions taken to neutralize him would not neutralize the network. Already, the network conducts many operations without bin Laden's involvement, leadership, or financing. Should he be killed or captured, the network would suffer, but it would still go on.

The Arab Afghans appear to have widely adopted information technology. According to reporters who visited bin Laden's headquarters in a remote mountainous area of Afghanistan, the terrorist financier has computers, communications equipment, a large number of disks for data storage, and a communications network that relies on the World Wide Web, e-mail, and electronic bulletin boards so that the extremists can exchange information without running a major risk of being intercepted by counterterrorism officials.

Bin Laden complements his significant technological capabilities with an extensive human courier network, the critical importance of which he learned during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. His combination of advanced and traditional communications systems represents a solid, redundant network.

Among the other groups, Hamas activists in the United States and elsewhere use Internet chat rooms to plan operations and use e-mail to coordinate activities across Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Algeria's Armed Islamic Group reportedly makes heavy use of floppy disks and computers to store and process information for members dispersed in Algeria and Europe. Hizbullah uses the Internet as a propaganda tool, managing three different World Wide Web sites: one for the central press office (www.hizbollah.org), another to describe its attacks on Israeli targets (www.moqawama.org), and the last for news and information (www.almanar.com.lb).

Yet everything that is high tech about "cyberterrorism" is often fueled by ancient forces. Whereas Middle Eastern terrorist groups dating back to the 1960s and 1970s still maintain a nationalist or Marxist agenda, most of the new groups that have arisen in the 1980s and 1990s rely on Islam as a basis for their radical ideology. Indeed, the goal of the Arab Afghan alliance is global opposition to perceived threats to Islam, as indicated by bin Laden's 1996 declaration of holy war against the United States and the West.

Some of the new terrorist groups--driven by religious mania, a desire for totalitarian control, or an impulse toward ultimate chaos--aim to induce the birth of a "new world." This paradigm harks back to millennialist movements that arose in past epochs of social upheaval, when would-be prophets attracted adherents from the margins of other social movements and led them to pursue salvation by seeking a final, violent cataclysm.

This paradigm is likely to seek the vast disruption of political, social, and economic order, possibly even involving weapons of mass destruction. Religious terrorists might desire destruction for its own sake or for some form of "cleansing." However, their ultimate goal is not so much the destruction of society as its rebirth after a chaotic disruption. Three of the authors--Arquilla, Ronfeldt, and Zanini--contend that netwars will emphasize disruption over destruction. In this view, networked terrorists no doubt will continue to destroy things and kill people, but the principal strategy may move toward the nonlethal end of the spectrum, where U.S. and allied command and control nodes and vulnerable information infrastructures provide rich sets of targets.

U.S. Air Force on Alert

At the same time, interconnectivity is a two-way street, and the degree to which a terrorist network uses complex information infrastructures for offensive purposes may determine its own exposure to counterattacks. Although terrorist organizations would often enjoy the benefit of surprise, their tactics could be adopted by their adversaries.

The key task for counterterrorism, therefore, is the identification of technological terrorist networks. Once they are identified, it may be possible to insert and disseminate false information through them, overload systems, misdirect message traffic, preclude access, and otherwise destroy and disrupt activities to prevent terrorist attacks.

The U.S. Air Force can take the following defensive and offensive steps against netwar, according to the RAND authors:

1. Do not modernize some communications nodes. Full interconnectivity with the Internet may allow cyberterrorists to enter where they could not go against the old command and control structures. The air force retains robust, dedicated systems, and so perhaps the answer lies in not interconnecting all sensitive communications as rapidly as possible. Paradoxically, less modernization may make for more security in some cases.

2. Develop defensive antiterror standards for all bases and missions. There are two situations in which aircraft are most vulnerable to attack: (1) when they are sitting on the ground, and (2) when they are taking off or landing. Air force commanders in disparate settings--deserts, urban areas, etc.--need to adhere to a common set of practices that would restrict the ability of terrorists to target aircraft with ground attacks or with standoff weapons during takeoff and landing.

3. If terrorism worsens substantially, shift air assets from overseas bases to the continental United States. Increased U.S. basing likely will make terrorism against air force personnel and equipment more difficult, but the shift will also be controversial, because it entails military and political costs. Some of these costs could be mitigated by negotiating with key countries to retain access to foreign bases in times of crisis, and regular exercises in these areas would demonstrate that the United States retains its extensive reach.

4. Possibly develop a war paradigm to counter terrorists who see themselves as waging war against the United States. Adopting a war paradigm would extend the range of targets to include more terrorist network nodes and the entire network itself. New weapons, such as high-energy radio frequency and high-power microwave weapons, might be needed to disrupt terrorist information flows. However, careful consideration would have to be given to the implications of a war paradigm on broader geopolitical and diplomatic objectives.

5. Organizationally, deepen interservice and interagency networking. Countering terror requires the formation of highly effective interagency and interservice command structures. As noted earlier, it may take networks to fight networks--and whoever masters the network form of organization will gain the greatest advantages. The U.S. Air Force should be a key node in such a network. This recommendation does not contradict the first recommendation about technological caution, because interorganizational networking is about cooperation, not technology. The U.S. military and intelligence communities are still largely stovepiped organizations despite having the best technology in the world. Conversely, true networking can happen with even very limited technical capabilities, because it relies on interactions between people, which can happen the old-fashioned way--in person.

6. Develop requirements for counterterrorist intelligence operations. Investigate the possibilities for "virtual human intelligence" ("virtual humint"), or virtual spying based on both hacking into terrorist telecommunications nets and developing capabilities to read "emanations" (communications read off of terrorist computer screens before they are encrypted). The latter capability probably would require using very small unmanned aerial vehicles teleoperated by information warfare personnel. The air force would have to remain mindful of the international legal constraints on such data "snooping."

7. Continue planning for traditional operations such as raiding key terrorist nodes, particularly deep underground facilities that might produce weapons of mass destruction. A key element of an eventual counterterrorist war paradigm, such planning would require careful analysis of terrorist nodes.

Lexicon of the New Terrorism

antiterrorism--defensive measures against terrorism counterterrorism--offensive (proactive) measures against terrorism cyberterrorism--computer-based, information-oriented terrorism cyberwar--information-oriented warfare waged by formal military forces cybotage--acts of disruption and destruction against information infrastructures; computer sabotage cyboteur--one who commits cybotage; anarchistic or nihilistic computer hacker; computer saboteur infosphere--the totality of all information media, especially those that are interconnected and internetted millennialism--in the context of terrorism, the belief, often driven by religious mania, that a rebirth of society requires a period of chaotic disruption netwar--information-oriented conflict waged by networks of primarily nonstate actors node--a person, vehicle, office, computer, or other point within a network superterrorism--the use by terrorists of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sustainable pulsing--the repeated convergence, redispersion, and recombination of small, dispersed, internetted forces against a succession of targets swarming--attacking from all directions; a mode of conflict suited to small, dispersed, internetted forces, especially if they can achieve sustainable pulsing teleoperate--to operate an aircraft or vehicle remotely via satellite, modem, or other telecommunications device virtual humint--virtual "human intelligence," or spying performed by unmanned aerial vehicles and other pilotless aircraft capable of "listening in on" satellite telecommunications of terrorists. (In military terminology, HUMINT differs from IMINT, or "imagery intelligence" from satellites, and SIGINT, or "signals intelligence" from radar.)

Related Reading

Countering the New Terrorism, Ian O. Lesser, Bruce Hoffman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, RAND/ MR-989-AF, 1999, 148 pp., ISBN 0-8330-2667-4.

The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico, David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Graham Fuller, Melissa Fuller, RAND/MR-994-A, 1998, 168 pp., ISBN 0-8330-2656-9.

In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., RAND/MR-880-OSD/RC, 1997, 501 pp., ISBN 0-8330-2514-7.

The Advent of Netwar, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, RAND/MR-789-OSD, 1996, 118 pp., ISBN 0-8330-2414-0.