The Advent of Netwar

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

A RAND publication relates to the administration's focus on 
borderless crime and/or dissent as national security threats:

The Advent of Netwar.

J. Arquilla, D.F. Ronfeldt

118 pp, 1996. $15.00 ISBN: 0833024140

Key concepts:

   Cybernetics -- Military aspects; 
   Electronic intelligence; 
   Military art and science -- Technological innovations;
   Communications, Military -- Technological aspects; 
   Electronic countermeasures 

Abstract: The information revolution is leading to the rise of 
network forms of organization, with unusual implications for 
how societies are organized and conflicts are conducted. "Netwar" 
is an emerging consequence. The term refers to societal conflict 
and crime, short of war, in which the protagonists are organized 
more as sprawling "leaderless" networks than as tight-knit 
hierarchies. Many terrorists, criminals, fundamentalists, and 
ethno-nationalists are developing netwar capabilities. A new 
generation of revolutionaries and militant radicals is also 
emerging, with new doctrines, strategies, and technologies that 
support their reliance on network forms of organization. Netwar 
may be the dominant mode of societal conflict in the 21st century. 
These conclusions are implied by the evolution of societies, 
according to a framework presented in this RAND study. The 
emergence of netwar raises the need to rethink strategy and 
doctrine to conduct counternetwar. Traditional notions of war 
and low-intensity conflict as a sequential process based on 
massing, maneuvering, and fighting will likely prove inadequate 
to cope with nonlinear, swarm-like, information-age conflicts in 
which societal and military elements are closely intermingled. 

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There is a summary of this document and ordering info at:

   http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR789.html