It takes a network to defeat a network

[Valin]

Boston Globe:

Niall Ferguson

March 28, 2016

 

The word of the week has been “network.” I have lost track of the number of times I have read that a terrorist network carried out last Tuesday’s lethal attacks in Brussels. The same is now being said about Sunday’s massacre in Lahore. Terrorists used to belong to “groups” and “organizations.” Increasingly, however, we say they belong to networks.

 

This is more than a matter of semantics. We stand no chance of defeating the Islamic State if we fail to understand the significance of its being a true network. President Barack Obama declared recently that “killing the so-called caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is one of the top goals” of the final year of his presidency.

 

The president is so proud of his achievement in authorizing the assassination of Osama bin Laden that he thinks he can decapitate ISIS by the same means. But the point about a network is that you cannot easily decapitate it. It is not a hierarchical structure, with an all-powerful leader at the top.

 

(Snip)

 

Just as McChrystal broke down the silo walls of American military bureaucracy, turning Joint Special Operations Command into a war-winning force, so today the West’s intelligence and security forces need to get networked as never before.

 

It takes a network to defeat a network. Those eight words — McChrystal’s Law — are the true lesson of Brussels and Lahore.