Out of the info loop: why information networks are crucial to modern warfare

Changes in business culture are also relevant to a discussion of I.O. To his credit, Berkowitz discusses this angle, partly through references to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, who in their analysis move readily from military to business to criminal groups. With due allowance for the persistence of managerial authority, the sustained shift from vertical command in enterprises to an increasing reliance on horizontal, team-based work suggests further grounding for American I.O. One detail merits further development, given American backwardness in the area: mobile technology. It would be interesting to see a non-American study of the American use of mobile devices in information warfare.

Perhaps more significantly, the recent history of political Islam bears on Al Qaeda's attachment to netwar. With the exceptions of the Iranian Islamic state and the brief Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Islamists tend to be in opposition, out of central governmental authority. Decades of experience in dissenting Brotherhoods, insurgent militias, or local leadership contesting central control encourages a greater affinity for information-centric organization than does running a traditional statist military organization.

Likewise, the marginal, guerrilla, or revolutionary experience fosters a facility for information operations. Consider Al Qaeda's distributed nature and roving career, its central core migrating from Saudi Arabia to Sudan to Afghanistan to (almost certainly) Pakistan, with franchise-like affiliates around the world negotiating for local leverage, material power, media play, and religious persuasion.

Some Islamists, such as those influenced by Sayyid Qutb, see the secular world as fallen and threatening enough to justify sustained disguise and deception, as the 9/11 hijackers likely did. They are well prepared for the invisibility required by swarming. Such a movement is already practicing netwar in its daily operations.

The war in Iraq continues as a guerrilla struggle, with coalition forces seeking energetically to get inside the insurgents' OODA cycles. The global campaign against Al Qaeda continues, in much the same form as in early 2003.Viruses continue to spread wantonly across networks, without any proven cases of an electronic Pearl Harbor. In formation warfare has emerged from its larval stage, and new I.O. organizations vie for global reach. Between them, Berkowitz and Kessler offer a useful framework for studying this pattern as it continues to emerge.

Bryan Alexander is co-director of the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College. He researches and teaches about information technology in higher education, and he blogs at infocult.typepad.com and at smartmobs.com.

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