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Brave New War

Posted on May 8, 2007
Filed Under Netcentric, Marketing, Opensource, Reading List |

I just read an excerpt from The Brave New War, a new book by John Robb of Global Guerrillas. I intend to buy this book. Based on the 11 page excerpt, it appears Robb has examined the GWOT from an open-source perspective.

“We have entered the age of the faceless, agile enemy. From London to Madrid to Nigeria to Russia, stateless terrorist groups have emerged to score blow after blow gainst us. Driven by cultural fragmentation, schooled in the most sophisticated technologies, and fueled by transnational
crime, these groups are forcing corporations and individuals to develop new ways of defending themselves.

The end result of this struggle will be a new, more resilient approach to national security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies. That new system will change how we live and work—for the better, in many ways—but the road getting there may seem long at times.

The conflict in Iraq has foreshadowed the future of global security in much the same way that the Spanish civil war prefigured World War II: it’s become a testing round, a dry run for something much larger. Unlike previous insurgencies, the one in Iraq comprises seventy-five
to one hundred small, diverse, and autonomous groups of zealots, patriots, and criminals alike. These groups, of course, have access to many of the same tools we do— from satellite phones to engineering degrees—and they use them every bit as effectively. But their single most important asset is their organizational structure, an open-source community network—one that seems to me quite similar to what we see in the software industry. That’s how they’re able to continually stay one step ahead of us. It is an extremely innovative structure, sadly, and it results in decision-making cycles much shorter than those of the U.S. military. Indeed, because the insurgents in Iraq lack a recognizable center of gravity—a leadership structure or an ideology—they are nearly immune to the application of conventional military force. Like Microsoft, the software superpower, the United States hasn’t found its match in a Goliath competitor similar to itself, but in a loose, selftuning network.

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