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IP: The resilience of networks
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 06:21:04 -0400
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> [Note: This item comes from reader Steve Schear. DLH] At 15:16 -0700 10/24/01, Steve Schear wrote:From: Steve Schear <schear () lvcm com> To: "Dewayne-Net Technology List" <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Subject: The resilience of networks Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 15:16:31 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/arts/20NET.html?todaysheadlines=&pagewanted=print> October 20, 2001 Lacking a Center, Terrorist Networks Are Hard to Find, Let Alone Fight By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN He sits motionless like a spider in the center of its web," is one description of the villain, "but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized," though it is "impossible to get evidence which could convict in a court of law." Such are the wiles of the evil Professor Moriarty, described by his nemesis, Sherlock Holmes, shortly before they plunge into Reichenbach Falls, apparently to their deaths. This metaphor of a spider web with a masterly evil plotter at its center is appealing as a description of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, but it may also be incorrect. A web, after all, has crucial vulnerabilities. Eliminate its creator, and the threads weaken. Destroy a few crucial links, and the strands collapse. But terrorist organizations are generally referred to as networks, which can be quite varied. Instead of being built around a controlling hub surrounded by terrorist cells, a network can be a sprawling, decentralized arrangement. In fact, the declarations that Americans are engaged in a different sort of war than ever before may have to do with this structure and not just with terrorism itself. Disabling a network often requires different strategies from those used to attack a nation or a hierarchical organization. The challenge may also be a distorted reflection of more profound shifts in culture and politics. For better or worse, the world has entered an era of networks. In recent years, for example the idea of a network has received substantial attention in mathematics, computer science and sociology. A network is, to put it simply, a collection of connected points called nodes. A node can be a telephone connected to switching stations and other telephones. It can be a computer using the Internet. Or it can be an individual communicating with other individuals for a common purpose. Networks are being studied for their properties (in a mathematical field known as network theory), for their applications (as in the Internet) and for an understanding of social organizations (ranging from online newsgroups to terrorist groups). The design of a network determines its resilience, its vulnerability and its power to expand. Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley, argues in a dense analytic trilogy, "The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture" (1998, Blackwell), that the development of computer networks, the Internet and banking networks has begun to affect the world order. As has been argued by other scholars, Mr. Castells says that these networks are creating new social structures. Once commerce and communication take place beyond national control, the status of the state changes. Notions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency are weakened. These developments have been welcomed by many for their promise of new forms of governance. But at the same time, these wide-ranging networks inspire an opposing reaction. The more the state withers, the more anxious and rootless its citizens become. And so there is an increasing pursuit of identity and a stronger urge to assert distinctions that have nothing to do with the state. In extreme form these network effects are reflected in the current situation. Technological networks helped terrorist networks flourish; agents could ignore national boundaries, rely on remote financial dealings and use the Internet to obtain news, send e-mail and book flights. (The hijackers even walked out of one hotel because it did not offer high-speed Internet access). Such international coordination and communication would have been far more difficult a decade ago. But these technological networks are also being used in fanatical pursuit of fundamentalist identity. The supranational network serves a supranational identity, creating a double threat to the state. Purely apart from its fundamentalist fury, in fact, Al Qaeda's network is trying to undermine at least some aspects of the modern nation- state. But unlike those who welcome a world free of nationalism, Al Qaeda seeks an almost premodern form of association. The modern state is partly founded on rational principles and is given shape by bureaucratic hierarchies and evolving canons of law. The terror networks are after something different: the dissolution of such principles and hierarchies and the expansion of religious connections across all national boundaries. In this case the attack had an archetypal quality, mounted against the most powerful nation-state on the globe. The vulnerability of the modern state is partly its transparency; its organization is based on interlocking webs, each dominated by a central authority. The sites targeted for the Sept. 11 attacks included crucial nodes of the state, the points required for maintenance of civic order: military and financial centers and possibly executive and legislative centers. The difficulty is that now a state must fight a network, which is far from easy since a network can be made unusually resilient and need not be designed around dominant power centers. This was, for example, a characteristic of a computer network designed for the Defense Department in the 1960's. It was meant to be invulnerable to nuclear attack. There was no hierarchical organization. No single computer or computer site was the center for the transmission of communications. Every message was broken into "packets" that could take completely different paths to their goals. If one node - a computer system or communications center - was taken out, messages could continue unimpeded. The Internet is the heir of that early network and preserves the same resilient design, which is one reason it was so much less affected than local telephone and television service on Sept. 11.<snip>
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