The global security environment is changing dramatically. The complexity of current and future national security realities highlights the necessity of bringing together all elements of national power in unprecedented fashion. Since the attacks of 9/11, U.S. government entities including the intelligence community and the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security have made significant strides in synchronizing efforts at both the strategic (i.e., regional planning) and tactical (i.e., counterterrorism) levels. But the most powerful tools of U.S. national power–our economic and informational engines in the public and private sectors–have yet to be effectively harnessed by the U.S. government.
This is a critical error. For, if properly synchronized, America’s economic and private sectors hold the power to proactively create “positional advantage” for the United States government and its allies against terrorist adversaries that employ irregular methods to exploit increasingly non- or under-governed spaces, such as Somalia and Yemen. Furthermore, the same initiative can leverage non-governmental organizations and other private sector entities to improve the success rate of America’s public/private international development projects. So, where in this article terrorist leadership is cited as the target the reader may understand that the utilization of network co-option can be employed, for example, to maximize development assistance in areas where criminal gangs, for instance, prevent access and/or intimidate the local populace.
Today, the understanding of this potential is becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet implementation has lagged behind, at least at the official level. Here, the U.S. government can learn from successful private sector businesses, which have effectively employed networks in global commercial activities, and from philanthropies and not-for-profit organizations, which have done the same across a wide range of humanitarian fields. Harnessing these actors can help Washington across a variety of complex contemporary security challenges, from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to Russian dominance over the Republic of Georgia to the looming threat of Iranian nuclear weapons.
It takes a network to defeat a network
The enormous challenges presented by the decentralized nature of modern terrorist organizations has served as an impetus for significant advances in collaboration and interagency coordination on the part of the U.S. government. The complex and often compartmentalized networks within which these terrorist groups operate include increasingly complex sub-networks in areas such as financing, logistics, training, media, and propaganda to gain positional advantage to support operations. These amorphous, seemingly invisible adversary networks coalesce around a shared, central cause such as international jihad (global Islamic revolution) and use all the tools at their disposal to collaborate and execute decentralized operations.
To counter this vast, multi-faceted “network of networks,” American networks must be thoroughly restructured. Accordingly, an ongoing attempt is under way to foster friendly networks that work in concert to disrupt enemy activity. To do so, the inward-looking tendencies of U.S. government bureaucracies must be dramatically reduced if not eliminated. Such deficiencies stymie information sharing and collaboration. Still in its infancy, this friendly network model has begun to chart successes and offers possibilities for expansion across the range of those areas that make up a country’s ability to influence other states, known as the DIME spectrum: diplomacy, intelligence, military and economic.
Previously untapped and uncoordinated private and corporate resources can be integrated into a larger public/private sector strategy to form another front in the larger American approach to irregular conflict. Such a system, however, involves more than sophisticated collaboration technology and strategic partnerships. To operate efficiently, the system would require stimulating networks around specific problem sets and areas, and organizing and managing Communities of Interest (COIs).
Communities of Interest
Communities of Interest (COI) describes activity that often appears randomly around shared causes and is manifested on the Internet through social websites, chat rooms and blogs. Frequently spontaneous, this phenomenon is accelerated through information-age technology that makes possible an improved situational awareness as disparate individuals and groups post information, pictures and videos.
In certain cases, these spontaneous COIs change from simply a group with a shared awareness to collective action. Armed with instantaneous information, improved access, and connected by a common cause, elements of the network emerge to drive activities that the individuals that compose it would otherwise be incapable of accomplishing on their own.
Intentionally creating such a network, or COI structure, to counter those of the terrorist organization requires both an understanding and employment of the organizing principles that “spontaneously” cause a random COI to form. These principles can be summarized by several common traits:
- Group focus around a common and/or shared problem
- A specific event or new information that draws them to this problem
- Shared situational awareness made possible by the Internet
- A combined willingness to contribute to the solution and work for the greater good of the community
- The employment of individual and group efforts to solve mutual problems
Community of Interest structure
The COI network is, in essence, a framework composed of the common challenges, problems, and collective goals that attract the Communities of Interest in the first place. At the core of this intentional self-organization is a Coordination and Collaboration node that acts as the catalyst for mobilization. Examining the evolution of terrorist networks, counterterrorism theory refers to these Coordination and Collaboration nodes as “identity entrepreneurs,” “operational leaders,” and “spiritual sanctioners.”
The 2007 New York Police Department report “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” provides this description:
Although there are many groups or clusters of individuals that are on the path of radicalization, each group needs certain archetypes to evolve from just being a “bunch of guys” to an operational terrorist cell. All eleven case studies had:
- A “spiritual sanctioner” who provides the justification for jihad–a justification that is especially essential for the suicide terrorist. In come cases, the sanctioner was the nucleus around which the cluster formed.
- An operational who is essential as the group decides to conduct a terrorist act–organizing, controlling and keeping the group focused and its motivation high.1
Therefore, it is essential that friendly, intentionally formed Communities of Interest have a similar mobilizing and operational leadership element.
COIs can be created
While unintentional Communities of Interest may spontaneously form, a COI structure can actually be created around a specific problem. By intentionally attracting known and emerging players to a high-priority common problem, the network of Communities of Interest can be quickly organized and led. These organizations and resources are often disparate, untapped, and may already be acting individually for their own benefit. Focused together, they can act as a unit of employment (UE), which is essentially a highly modifiable unit that integrates and synchronizes groups so it can take on larger and more complex issues. The UE, when combined with essential ingredients from other elements in the system, can create, in a sense, a comprehensive “private/public sector combined arms team” whose sum is greater than its parts.
Such a UE would be best applied toward problem solving rather than simply rallying around a cause. Furthermore, led by loosely integrated leadership nodes (described below), this network of Communities of Interest will inherently find other stakeholders, discover other critical elements of information, and spur multiple approaches against the common problem set.
Employing intentional Communities of Interest
After a common cause, problem set, or “influence zone” is designated, the Coordination and Collaboration node is responsible for its daily and weekly management and maintenance. The community’s members interact primarily through information technology such as video teleconferencing and e-mail. Nevertheless, it is the human dimension–the people, relationships, collaborative spirit, and focus–that serves as the glue binding the organizational structure of the network together. Trusted agents or known experts, often introduced through liaisons, are charter members of the COI. Over time, members will introduce other members who add value to the network.
Direction and focus are critical. The Coordination and Collaboration nodes are essentially responsible for managing the disparate interests, fostering entrepreneurial initiatives, and maintaining operational priorities within the COI. These designated representatives must intuitively and selflessly think about collaboration, and always be looking to share/link information to other efforts. They must tie in vertically to the leadership–usually a stakeholder to the Coordination and Collaboration node–outward to COI stakeholders, and horizontally to their fellow COI Coordination and Collaboration nodes.
Communities of Interest are expected to adapt, flex, and evolve over time. The key to successful leadership and management is flexibility and focus. To be relevant to the network, Communities of Interest must integrate into the common cause, encourage collaboration, solve associated challenges, and channel effort into shared credit.
As with enemy networks, friendly COI networks often require multiple Communities of Interest acting independently. Geographically, they can be located forward, in or around the “influence zone,” or in safe rear areas including the United States. Ideally, a combination of the two provides optimized placement. In all cases, it is imperative that Coordination and Collaboration nodes and the Communities of Interest communicate and work together.
Boosting international economic development
Private sector Communities of Interest could be developed using similar steps at the investor, corporate headquarters, and local overseas levels, albeit with several unique caveats. Ideally, investors would be motivated by a compelling national problem that coincides with a personal interest or opportunity for financial gain. Mobilized by a third party private sector venture capital node, they would invest resources so that others (or they themselves) can improve the situation or solve a critical problem.
This venture capital node would need to be aligned with the strategic intent of U.S. government entities to ensure that corporate stakeholder Communities of Interest receive the necessary assistance, access and/or placement to thrive in the affected regions. It would be na�Øve to think the private sector would embark on a risky proposition in an emerging market or ungoverned state without reasonable assurances of enhanced security or competitive advantage.
Thus, a private sector COI node should mobilize and establish a forward presence to assess security risks, conduct advanced economic scouting, and form local area private sector networks. Depending on the operating zone, this can be done independently or to augment existing U.S. government efforts. This advance force/risk mitigation team of specialized private sector personnel would be prepared to enter the region as a sort of “economic special operations force” to train, advise, and assist the local population. Self-sustaining, they would establish local networks and build security and economic capacity at the local level while interfacing with the host nation to ensure that the operating environment is compatible with future development programs and initiatives. They would also scout for indigenous and allied investor networks that may have mutual interests in establishing capital growth.
For instance, in a friendly “influence zone,” private sector COIs may be financially self-sustaining, relying on outside synchronization for more strategic priorities and for coordination once operations in the local environment commence. Outside investors from a private sector COI may be able to pool resources, confident in the ability of specialized security teams to provide backup for mitigating risks associated with economic development. Consequently, while the private sector Coordination and Collaboration node would synchronize priorities with the Department of Defense and U.S. government-designated influence zones, external partnerships would more inherently involve U.S. embassies, local commercial entities, international industry, and NGOs.
To manage resources more efficiently, private sector businesses would be the vanguard for friendly influence zones and expend more resources on the front end while the U.S. government would benefit from a more receptive local populace.
In a hostile “influence zone,” however, it is anticipated that the private sector may require more complex interaction with the Department of Defense and other elements of the U.S. government on all levels–from strategic to tactical–including planning and execution, rear sector resources, and forward deployed support. This is necessary for a variety of reasons, including security de-confliction, augmentation of existing Department of Defense/U.S. government contracts, as well as collaboration across the aforementioned DIME spectrum. For areas under some form of international administration, the effort would be more of a hand-in-hand approach, while areas actively contested by enemy forces would be left mostly for U.S. government forces initially, most likely harnessing existing private sector contracts and deliverables, followed by independently operating private sector/business COIs once conditions have been set.
Therefore, in a hostile zone, while the crisis may attract private sector interest quickly, it is expected that once a COI emerges to assist ongoing efforts, financially there will be some level of sub-contracting and mutual support brokered to augment prime contractors. Through shared situational awareness, private sector COIs can pool resources and expand to other COIs with similar interests to execute privately what the U.S. government or the Department of Defense would be incapable of doing. An example of this may be the formation of a private COI composed of industry experts from untapped areas that get involved analytically at first, then are “tapped” to support ongoing efforts through sub-contracts to existing prime contractors if their solutions are beneficial to existing efforts or can fill gaps and seams otherwise left uncovered.
Toward a “Whole of Nation” approach
The incorporation and synchronization of America’s economic and private sectors into government efforts, referred to as a “Whole of Nation” approach, is necessary for the U.S. and allied efforts to actively engage and defeat the global terrorist threat. The U.S. government, while powerful, can solve only a finite number of problems. To effectively confront an irregular adversary who has enjoyed relative freedom of movement in the shadows, in the schools, in the boardrooms, on the Internet, and has created instability and uncertainty, and thwarted development and progress.
This model is a conceptual starting point for a serious dialogue of how to make private sector mobilization successful on a scale not yet seen in the Global War on Terror. Drawing from lessons learned in academia, social networking, and Department of Defense/Information Architecture fusion centers, the central tenets expressed in this brief article provide an outline for coalescing economic and private sector strengths with traditional Department of Defense and U.S. government efforts.
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