"What if they changed the rules of warfare and no one told the Pentagon?"

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Product Description

"For my money, John Robb, a former Air Force officer and tech guru, is the futurists' futurist."
—Slate

The counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions—like sabotaging an oil pipeline—that generate a huge return. He shows how combating the shutdown of the world’s oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we’ve come to value the most—worldwide economic and cultural integration—and what we must do now to safeguard against this new method of warfare.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178898 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780471780793
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"a fast, thought-sparking book." (The New York Times, May 18, 2007)

From the Inside Flap

During the summer of 2004, a small group of Iraqi insurgents blew up a southern section of the Iraqi oil pipeline infrastructure. This attack cost an estimated $2,000 to produce, and no attackers were caught, while the explosion cost Iraq $500 million in lost oil exports—a rate of return 250,000 times the cost of the attack.

In Brave New War, the controversial terrorism expert John Robb argues that the shift from state-against-state conflicts to wars against small, ad hoc bands of like-minded insurgents will lead to a world with as many tiny armies as there are causes to fight for. Our new enemies are looking for gaps in vital systems where a small, cheap action—blowing up an oil pipeline or knocking out a power grid—will generate a huge return.

Drawing on scores of chilling examples from the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, Robb reveals how the technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists, criminals, and violent ideologues of every stripe to join forces against a far bigger and richer foe without revealing their identities, following orders, or even working toward the same ultimate goal. This new brand of open-source warfare enables insurgents to coordinate attacks, swarm on targets, and adapt rapidly to changes in their enemy's tactics, all at minimal cost and risk. And now, Robb shows, it is being exported around the world, from Pakistan to Nigeria to Mexico, creating a new class of insurgents he calls global guerrillas.

This evolutionary leap in the methods of warfare makes it possible for extremely small nonstate groups to fight states and possibly win on a regular basis. The use of systems disruption as a method of strategic warfare gives rise to a nightmare scenario in which any nation—including the United States—can be driven to bankruptcy by an enemy it can't compete with economically. We are staring at a future where defeat isn't experienced all at once but as an inevitable withering away of military, economic, and political power through wasting conflicts with minor foes.

How can we defend ourselves against this pernicious new menace? Brave New War presents a debate-changing argument that no one who cares about national security can afford to ignore: it is time, says Robb, to decentralize all of our systems, from energy and communications to security and markets. It is time for every citizen to take personal responsibility for some aspect of state security. It is time to make our systems, and ourselves, as flexible, adaptable, and resilient as the forces that are arrayed against us.

From the Back Cover
"For my money, John Robb, a former Air Force officer and tech guru, is the futurists' futurist."
—Slate

War in the twenty-first century will be very different from what we've come to expect. Terrorism and guerrilla warfare are rapidly evolving to allow nonstate networks to challenge the structure and order of nation-states. It is a change on par with the rise of the Internet and China, and will dramatically change how you and your kids will view security.

In Brave New War, the counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions—like sabotaging an oil pipeline—that will generate a huge return. He shows how taking steps to combat the shutdown of the world's oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we've come to value the most—worldwide economic and cultural integration—and the crucial steps we must take now to safeguard our systems and ourselves against this new method of warfare.

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Customer Reviews

Order emerges from chaos - ready or not
Since the end of World War II, the world's population has nearly tripled, the Internet has allowed anybody to network with everybody, nuclear weapons have made conventional war obsolete among major powers, and the fall of the Soviet Union has unleashed a witches' brew of armed non-state groups - global guerrillas - that operate in the cracks of the disintegrating state system.

This is just the static picture; the dynamics are even scarier. Global guerrillas practice something Robb calls "open source warfare," which means that in the modern environment, people even on different continents can form or join groups, train, and carry out operations much more quickly than in the past or than the major legacy states can today. As the groups learn from each other (and a sort of Darwinism selects out the unfit), a larger pattern forms, an "emergent intelligence," similar to a marauding colony of army ants, no one of which is very sophisticated, but operating together according to simple rules, they are survivable, adaptable, and in a suitable environment, invincible.

As Robb summarizes it:

... the behavior of these insurgencies as a whole seems to learn, achieve goals, and engage in self-preservation, despite the vast differences in how individual groups are organized. (p. 126)

One could dismiss all of this as speculation except for a couple of facts:

* Much of the software industry and a lot of the Internet (e.g., the Wikipedia) operate using the open source model today
* Nothing else seems to explain the success of the people attacking our forces in Iraq

To construct this model, Robb employs a number of concepts that may be new to people unfamiliar with modern systems theory: close-coupled systems, self-organization, emergent properties (particularly "intelligence"), stigmergy, and the concept of complexity arising from simple processes. He also introduces new tools for understanding how systems work in the modern world: open source insurgency, global virtual states, superempowerment, systempunkts, and "black swans."

These are all powerful ideas and not in the least theoretical as Robb illustrates with events from the evening news. Whether you agree with Robb's end position or his solutions, these are concepts that are needed to describe why today's world is different from that of the Cold War.

As the framework for his solution, Robb proposes a modern version of survivalism. We won't all be holed up in cabins in the woods, a la the Unabomber. But if we are living in a world that is "tightly coupled," where a glitch in the power system in Ohio can cascade into a massive outage involving 50,000,000 people along the entire East Coast, then the solution must involve some loosening.

Robb's general strategy is to improve resilience by any means possible. I could imagine, for example, that instead of building new power plants that, along with their distribution systems, are vulnerable to disruption, the government provides market incentives to improve resilience. The government could increase subsidies to utilities and require all of them to buy electricity from homeowners during the day and sell it at reduced rates at night. As more people add power generation capability to their houses - solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, whatever - resilience improves. This may not be the most efficient solution, but in the age of open source insurgency, too much efficiency can be dangerous.

Robb makes a compelling case that this model will also work for national security. It is certainly working very well for the groups we are fighting.

Whether you agree with his particular solutions is not important. However, the pieces of the problem are real and we are going to have to create ways to deal with open source conflict - an intelligence that emerges through the dynamic interaction of religious fanatics, street gangs, criminal cartels, and at times even other states - or face a series of disruptions that will severely degrade our quality of life.

Brave New Concept
For anyone involved in strategic planning, security, financial markets, energy infrastructure, scenario planning, transportation or communications networking, this book is a must-read. For those of us who follow his work at the GlobalGuerrillas blog, much of the information is familiar, but presented here in book form, the many strands of thought that make up the concept come together effectively.

In short, modern communications technology and complex infrastructure make it much easier for small groups to "hollow out" a state. These groups usually don't want to take over a government, they just want to make the state weak so they can get on with their goals of smuggling, ethnic violence, or other profitable criminal activies. This ability to leverage violence and the inability of most to understand the goals of these groups will loom large in policy circles in the future.

This is the kind of book that sparks a lot of further reading and research, in my opinion. Mr. Robb is taking concepts from war, commerce and communications and making a useful model from them. This concept will be useful for families, corporations and countries.

If you want to understand the concepts that will define debate about war, insurgency, globalization and society in the coming decades, buy a copy of this book. If you are low on cash, skip a few lunches and save up the money. It is worth it.

Comprehending the chaos...
I'm giving 'Brave New War' five stars not because it's engaging and fascinating (which it is), but because it's an important book. The media rarely addresses the dramatic changes now underway in military conflict with anything deeper than good-versus-evil jingoism. But here, Robb explores the drivers that are reshaping global warfare and the decentralized networks (digital and physical) that make this possible. The author provides an entirely new toolset for understanding why the world is changing and why familiar solutions no longer work.

This book does not pull its punches. Some may be upset by its matter-of-fact presentation of guerrilla strategies, but it is precisely this type of honest analysis that's needed if we're going to build a sustainable civilization. If you live in the modern world, then you need to read this book. If you are in command of an army, then you especially need to read this book.