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Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization
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.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 20, 2007
About the author
John Robb
1 book16 followersJohn is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, engineer, and military pilot. He's started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 m and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John's insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek.
John served as a pilot in a tier one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.
John served as a pilot in a tier one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
July 30, 2020
Full Disclosure--my brother is the author. We all grew up reading and studying war, debating it, and playing war games like Third Reich and the Guns of August. He bookmarked all the major battles of the world (Marathon to Vietnam) in our set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. We grew up in a military family, all of us having served careers in the military and gone to the requisite military academies, staff and war colleges, so this book was in his blood. He is a forward thinker, able to appreciate the present but not be bogged down by it, and always prescient of the next 5-20 years. He has a wide aperture of interests (and a voracious reader) that he blends from history, war, strategy, geo politics, business, technology, finance and human behavior.
This was my second crack at his book (first read in 2007 when it came out, loved it then), but I was curious to see how it would hold up over time. I would give him an "A" on general overarching ideas and a "B" on specificity. The major tenets are still holding up (global guerrillas using "open-sourced" methods to create "system disruption") -- this held up in Iraq and Afghanistan -- with the effect of the US withdrawals/drawdowns from both areas, the loss of legitimacy, the increase of hatred of the West, and both a cost in money and lives lost. The US, UK, and other European countries did experience the wrath of global guerillas (i.e. ISIS). The systems disruption did not target utilities or oil pipelines, it targeted people and created terror, with a massive response by US govt spending on security and tightening of laws in the name of preventing the next attack (DHA, anti-terrorism, TSA, FISA, the "Wall", etc)--this leads to legitimacy issues (constitutional questions of over-reach), massive spending (debt), and loss of moral high ground in the world.
As some interesting examples of getting things right:
He does discuss the future threat of a global pandemic that spreads as fast and as far as airplanes fly. And the fact that federal response to a crisis like this will be "brittle" (breaks fast) and the burden will be on the states (who are woefully underprepared). [Page 153 of his book]
On page 184, he states that "the first casualty of [a black swan event] will be the ultrabureaucratic U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which, despite its new extralegal powers, will be unable to isolate and defuse the threats against us. It's one big idea for keeping the global insurgency at bay--building a fence between Mexico and the United States, proposed as effective as the Maginot Line and the Great Wall of China. Furthermore, the extra police powers will be counterproductive because these powers will only serve to divide the United States and generate a significant base of domestic dissent and vociferous debate." Seems like this is happening across the US, and across the world currently.
Spoiler: this book was leading to a potential second book on community resiliency and decentralized security, as more effective means to mitigate the oncoming shocks and black swans (COVID-19) of a globalized society. If you read his blog, you got a deep dose of what he means by resiliency.
Overall, in this book, you'll experience a fast-moving experience of ideas (his smorgasbord) on war, business, strategy, resilience, history, interconnectivity, economics, networks, black swans, the internet, guerrilla warfare, IEDs, significant authors to read, all tied together to create a vision (not necessarily a "good" one, but one where there is survival and prosperity) of the forces (mostly the evolving forms of nation states as affected by globalization and the interconnectivity) that are shaping our future. He's a clear thinker, an exciting writer, and will provoke your thoughts and hopefully give you some perspective about these topics in these confused and complicated days. I'm glad there are smart people like him around, sharing their ideas with us, and prodding us to a better different path.
This was my second crack at his book (first read in 2007 when it came out, loved it then), but I was curious to see how it would hold up over time. I would give him an "A" on general overarching ideas and a "B" on specificity. The major tenets are still holding up (global guerrillas using "open-sourced" methods to create "system disruption") -- this held up in Iraq and Afghanistan -- with the effect of the US withdrawals/drawdowns from both areas, the loss of legitimacy, the increase of hatred of the West, and both a cost in money and lives lost. The US, UK, and other European countries did experience the wrath of global guerillas (i.e. ISIS). The systems disruption did not target utilities or oil pipelines, it targeted people and created terror, with a massive response by US govt spending on security and tightening of laws in the name of preventing the next attack (DHA, anti-terrorism, TSA, FISA, the "Wall", etc)--this leads to legitimacy issues (constitutional questions of over-reach), massive spending (debt), and loss of moral high ground in the world.
As some interesting examples of getting things right:
He does discuss the future threat of a global pandemic that spreads as fast and as far as airplanes fly. And the fact that federal response to a crisis like this will be "brittle" (breaks fast) and the burden will be on the states (who are woefully underprepared). [Page 153 of his book]
On page 184, he states that "the first casualty of [a black swan event] will be the ultrabureaucratic U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which, despite its new extralegal powers, will be unable to isolate and defuse the threats against us. It's one big idea for keeping the global insurgency at bay--building a fence between Mexico and the United States, proposed as effective as the Maginot Line and the Great Wall of China. Furthermore, the extra police powers will be counterproductive because these powers will only serve to divide the United States and generate a significant base of domestic dissent and vociferous debate." Seems like this is happening across the US, and across the world currently.
Spoiler: this book was leading to a potential second book on community resiliency and decentralized security, as more effective means to mitigate the oncoming shocks and black swans (COVID-19) of a globalized society. If you read his blog, you got a deep dose of what he means by resiliency.
Overall, in this book, you'll experience a fast-moving experience of ideas (his smorgasbord) on war, business, strategy, resilience, history, interconnectivity, economics, networks, black swans, the internet, guerrilla warfare, IEDs, significant authors to read, all tied together to create a vision (not necessarily a "good" one, but one where there is survival and prosperity) of the forces (mostly the evolving forms of nation states as affected by globalization and the interconnectivity) that are shaping our future. He's a clear thinker, an exciting writer, and will provoke your thoughts and hopefully give you some perspective about these topics in these confused and complicated days. I'm glad there are smart people like him around, sharing their ideas with us, and prodding us to a better different path.
November 13, 2010
90% outstanding and 10% really coming up short... I'd have given this 5 stars if the author, John Robb, had done as good a job in the last section as in the rest.
He did a superb job analyzing the flaws in conventional military thought, and in the current administration's strategy or lack thereof, when it comes to dealing with Al Qaeda, Iraq, and modern guerrilla and terrorist movements in general. A lot of the content of this book is in line with General Rupert Smith's thinking in The Utility of Force, which has earned the respectful attention of military professionals worldwide.
The place where Robb fails is in his proposed solution, which amounts to simply decentralized pure capitalism applied to counterinsurgency. There are two problems with his vision. The first is that it offers nothing in the way of safety or quality of life for the vast majority of the world's population who happen to be poor; his vision of a world of self-sufficient enclaves leaves out everyone who isn't rich or at least upper middle class, and those categories make up a distinct and shrinking minority. The second problem is that although he pays lip service to the need to convert our energy economy to renewables, he ignores the fact that we're already past the point where we could have created enough renewable energy technology before the fossil fuels run out to sustain us in the lifestyle to which we've gotten accustomed.
I would like this book a lot better if Robb acknowledged the existence of a social contract or of any sense of mutual obligation by which we had a responsibility to help each other out, even those who don't have deep enough pockets to pay for an equal share of security. And after all, although Robb makes no mention of it, it's generally accepted that reducing the hardships of widespread poverty would do a lot, though not all that's needed, to reduce the population of those willing to become guerrillas or terrorists in the first place. I also wish he'd been more realistic about the impact of peak oil (followed closely by peak natural gas, peak coal, and even peak uranium) on the other factors he considers.
He did a superb job analyzing the flaws in conventional military thought, and in the current administration's strategy or lack thereof, when it comes to dealing with Al Qaeda, Iraq, and modern guerrilla and terrorist movements in general. A lot of the content of this book is in line with General Rupert Smith's thinking in The Utility of Force, which has earned the respectful attention of military professionals worldwide.
The place where Robb fails is in his proposed solution, which amounts to simply decentralized pure capitalism applied to counterinsurgency. There are two problems with his vision. The first is that it offers nothing in the way of safety or quality of life for the vast majority of the world's population who happen to be poor; his vision of a world of self-sufficient enclaves leaves out everyone who isn't rich or at least upper middle class, and those categories make up a distinct and shrinking minority. The second problem is that although he pays lip service to the need to convert our energy economy to renewables, he ignores the fact that we're already past the point where we could have created enough renewable energy technology before the fossil fuels run out to sustain us in the lifestyle to which we've gotten accustomed.
I would like this book a lot better if Robb acknowledged the existence of a social contract or of any sense of mutual obligation by which we had a responsibility to help each other out, even those who don't have deep enough pockets to pay for an equal share of security. And after all, although Robb makes no mention of it, it's generally accepted that reducing the hardships of widespread poverty would do a lot, though not all that's needed, to reduce the population of those willing to become guerrillas or terrorists in the first place. I also wish he'd been more realistic about the impact of peak oil (followed closely by peak natural gas, peak coal, and even peak uranium) on the other factors he considers.
August 20, 2019
This is kind of the anti-Sutherland--Robb looks at the new kinds of terrorism being perfected in Iraq and Afghanistan and sees the logical outcome of technologies (money transfer, communication, availability of plans for IEDs, GPS, small UAS systems) being used in a "fail fast, report the results, try something else or repeat a success as a swarm" method familiar from start up businesses. Where this really stands out in contrast to the usual goony response like iGuerilla is that Robb is clear eyed about the increasing presence of domestic terrorism linked by the internet, and that the wrong thing to do is to become exclusionary, brittle and knee-jerk in response. Vulnerability increases with racist policies that alienate the population, energy dependence makes us put up with Saudi meddling, and if we produce and indulge our own caste of angry young men rather than address their underlying pissiness, we'll get the same results as Egypt and Pakistan.
June 22, 2012
I first read this book in 2007 as research for Robert Greene's address to a class at West Point and it's stuck with me and stood up better than almost all the books I've read on technology since then. Brave New War is an examination of Fourth Generation Warfare, or the war of networked groups against states. Think: Al-Queda vs US. Mujahadeen vs Russia. Anonymous vs Scientology. Bloggers vs brands/companies/celebrities. In retrospect, a handful of Robb's predictions turned out to be a bit overstated but the essential premise of the book has been proven correct hundreds of times since its publication date. Both the book and his blog on the subject have turned out to be incredibly helpful to me both in understanding current events and in my actual professional life. It's a short, straightforward read (unlike most war books) and 100% has to be on your shelf.
March 9, 2011
Interesting look at how technology and social organization have changed the nature of warfare. Essentially an argument that we're now in the era of postmodern conflict, where nobody may be able to claim territory permanently, but almost anybody working with a few devoted colleagues could carry out a catastrophic attack.
January 18, 2010
I had the pleasure of reading John Robb's Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization over the last week. I've been familiar with his excellent blog, Global Guerrillas, for some time now, but reading the framework that he's constructed for his own analyses has added a great deal of depth to my own understanding of his philosophy.
Brave New War is broken into three parts: "The Future of War is Now," "Global Guerrillas," and "How Globalization Will Put an End to Globalization." The first is devoted to examining the present security situation. This includes the origins and motives for a number of global non-state actors, as well as the American experience in Iraq. This is also where the history of Robb's terminology is explained: fourth-generation warfare, effects-based operations, etcetera. He covers a number of other military engagements: the Gulf War, the Chechen War, and others. It's all very plainly written, and definitely where to start if you haven't read his blog or anything else on the subject.
The "Global Guerrillas" section is clearly Robb's baby. He has put a good deal of effort into explaining the dynamics of these groups, and why they're able to act so effectively. It's here more than anywhere else in the book that Robb draws on systems and network theory to better understand the dimensions of global guerrillas. It's here that the book really takes on a coherent shape, and to a certain extent takes on a flavor of business. From the "long tail" and returns on investment to the shadow economy and transnational gangsterism, we truly see why it's globalization driving the new revolution in asymmetric warfare.
The third section is a little different. Rather than explain why the Iraqi oil pipelines are as vulnerable as they are, he turns to networks in the United States to see where our own weaknesses lie. At the outset, Robb clearly states that he's not really writing in order to proscribe a solution, but rather in order to point out the significance of our problems and vulnerabilities. He certainly excels at that, but what struck me were just how good his limited suggestions were. They are as simple as they want us to be, and that's really the core: simplicity. Resiliency, self-sustainability, and general preparedness are really the watchwords of Brave New War. That's not to say we should all be survivalists living off the grid; rather, everyone should be both taking from and contributing to the grid, through local agriculture, family solar power units, and other 'green' developments.
The last part, particularly, was the piece I had missed when trying to follow Robb's other work. His near-apocalyptic claims of the coming collapse of the state are a little overwrought, but even when he slips into hyperbole, there's still an important kernel of truth underlying it. The state is weakening, and in no small part it now falls upon its citizens to maintain their own security.
Mostly, I hope that he's wrong. But in the likely event he's not, then this book will serve as the how-to manual for living in the network-centric world after statehood.
Brave New War is broken into three parts: "The Future of War is Now," "Global Guerrillas," and "How Globalization Will Put an End to Globalization." The first is devoted to examining the present security situation. This includes the origins and motives for a number of global non-state actors, as well as the American experience in Iraq. This is also where the history of Robb's terminology is explained: fourth-generation warfare, effects-based operations, etcetera. He covers a number of other military engagements: the Gulf War, the Chechen War, and others. It's all very plainly written, and definitely where to start if you haven't read his blog or anything else on the subject.
The "Global Guerrillas" section is clearly Robb's baby. He has put a good deal of effort into explaining the dynamics of these groups, and why they're able to act so effectively. It's here more than anywhere else in the book that Robb draws on systems and network theory to better understand the dimensions of global guerrillas. It's here that the book really takes on a coherent shape, and to a certain extent takes on a flavor of business. From the "long tail" and returns on investment to the shadow economy and transnational gangsterism, we truly see why it's globalization driving the new revolution in asymmetric warfare.
The third section is a little different. Rather than explain why the Iraqi oil pipelines are as vulnerable as they are, he turns to networks in the United States to see where our own weaknesses lie. At the outset, Robb clearly states that he's not really writing in order to proscribe a solution, but rather in order to point out the significance of our problems and vulnerabilities. He certainly excels at that, but what struck me were just how good his limited suggestions were. They are as simple as they want us to be, and that's really the core: simplicity. Resiliency, self-sustainability, and general preparedness are really the watchwords of Brave New War. That's not to say we should all be survivalists living off the grid; rather, everyone should be both taking from and contributing to the grid, through local agriculture, family solar power units, and other 'green' developments.
The last part, particularly, was the piece I had missed when trying to follow Robb's other work. His near-apocalyptic claims of the coming collapse of the state are a little overwrought, but even when he slips into hyperbole, there's still an important kernel of truth underlying it. The state is weakening, and in no small part it now falls upon its citizens to maintain their own security.
Mostly, I hope that he's wrong. But in the likely event he's not, then this book will serve as the how-to manual for living in the network-centric world after statehood.
February 14, 2009
I had a hard time reading this as straight current events; I kept slipping into reading it as a Ballard-ian dystopia or as business strategy. Robb is a kind of thinker that I relate to. Driven by analogy, ricocheting across different domains without respect for boundaries, less compelled to work out the messy details that form close the loop than seeding something crystalline and letting the expansion happen through aggregation. In a sense, this process is at the root of his case for the evolution of "terrorism" and it's more or less applicable to all systems or organizations: a simple rule set based on homogeneity and openness leads to loosely coupled ad hoc networks that over-run purpose built systems. These networks are lightweight, durable, innovative. Think of the robustness of weeds and rhizomes (though he never references Deleuze, it's very Deleuze-ian) versus nurtured plant strains ... or desktop oriented companies versus the horde of web companies actively looking to outmaneuver or interdict them ... or, perhaps more common, passively doing so without concern for their position. The hierarchy is irrelevant; command and control is passe.
War has its trends and they tend to follow large scale economic trends and, therefore, map well to cultural transformations that are also economically impacted. Welcome to open source warfare ... War 4.0.
War has its trends and they tend to follow large scale economic trends and, therefore, map well to cultural transformations that are also economically impacted. Welcome to open source warfare ... War 4.0.
August 17, 2012
This wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, based on reading his blog for awhile.
Although it has plenty of thought-provoking ideas and counter-mainstream tropes, it feels a bit scattershot -- almost like Robb glued a bunch of Global Guerillas blog posts together for a book.
A lack of specificity in a lot of instances hurts the analysis.
And given that this was written circa 2007, many of his more dire predictions haven't quite panned out. Which makes me wonder why. Is the time-course just wrong, or the underpinnings of his theory?
Upon reflection, too, much of the analysis seems to lack consideration of the human element -- it's fine to talk about systems and goals, but in reality, people are people. They're not always rational, or slaves to certain interests. I can buy his general idea that states are in decline, but maybe he's underestimating that most people will still hew to them long after they've lost their effectiveness (depending, of course, on the severity of the situation they find themselves in).
Discussion of Mexico as a failed/hollow state may have helped readers in this hemisphere understand a little bit better.
Ultimately, it's worth a read, just be prepared for an uneven ride and some ideas that aren't completely fleshed out.
Although it has plenty of thought-provoking ideas and counter-mainstream tropes, it feels a bit scattershot -- almost like Robb glued a bunch of Global Guerillas blog posts together for a book.
A lack of specificity in a lot of instances hurts the analysis.
And given that this was written circa 2007, many of his more dire predictions haven't quite panned out. Which makes me wonder why. Is the time-course just wrong, or the underpinnings of his theory?
Upon reflection, too, much of the analysis seems to lack consideration of the human element -- it's fine to talk about systems and goals, but in reality, people are people. They're not always rational, or slaves to certain interests. I can buy his general idea that states are in decline, but maybe he's underestimating that most people will still hew to them long after they've lost their effectiveness (depending, of course, on the severity of the situation they find themselves in).
Discussion of Mexico as a failed/hollow state may have helped readers in this hemisphere understand a little bit better.
Ultimately, it's worth a read, just be prepared for an uneven ride and some ideas that aren't completely fleshed out.
March 25, 2016
I will first state that I agree with the quote on the front of the book, it is "a fast thought-sparking book."
I started reading John Robb's blogs a few years ago. I have come to appreciate his thinking on community self-sufficiency and his thoughts on security, terrorism, and such.
I wish I could say that I think the West will quickly and painlessly adapt to the current threats it faces. If anything, the current election seems to show we haven't even realized the problems. The book is ten years old, and we seem to have gone further in the knee jerk reactionary police state phase, especially with the Apple encryption case and similar.
The age of the book brings me to another thing, I would like to see an update in the next few years, mostly for an appendix that gives Robb's opinion on where we are now, what has changed, and if he wants to amend any sections.
Finally, I especially like the concluding chapters. I think terrorism is largely something we are going to have to adapt to, it isn't going away. Sustainable communities rather than overarching nation-states seem the best way, and the healthiest way, to adapt, and lead to a better future either way.
I started reading John Robb's blogs a few years ago. I have come to appreciate his thinking on community self-sufficiency and his thoughts on security, terrorism, and such.
I wish I could say that I think the West will quickly and painlessly adapt to the current threats it faces. If anything, the current election seems to show we haven't even realized the problems. The book is ten years old, and we seem to have gone further in the knee jerk reactionary police state phase, especially with the Apple encryption case and similar.
The age of the book brings me to another thing, I would like to see an update in the next few years, mostly for an appendix that gives Robb's opinion on where we are now, what has changed, and if he wants to amend any sections.
Finally, I especially like the concluding chapters. I think terrorism is largely something we are going to have to adapt to, it isn't going away. Sustainable communities rather than overarching nation-states seem the best way, and the healthiest way, to adapt, and lead to a better future either way.
January 18, 2014
“I keep coming back to the way terrorism and guerrilla warfare is rapidly evolving,” John Robb writes in the preface of the paperback version, “to allow nonstate networks to challenge the structure and order of nation-states.” Brave New War is a book about terrorism but defines the structure of an interconnected world in regards to war, politics, and business. He argues that for the first time in modern history an outsider can not only fight a modern war--but win. This leaves established organizations (corporations and governments) in a tenuous position. Recent memory has shown that Robb’s final thesis was right; companies that embrace lean tactics flourish, while others fade away. “We have two choices: we can enable its emergence, or we can delay it until it evolves on its own out of necessity.“
August 27, 2019
Some good points but I wonder about the prescience
Futurist John Robb sees us going through a period in which increasingly things will get very local with people and organizations hiring private security companies to protect them. He sees a breakdown in global trade because of terrorist activities (both oil and security will become so expensive that a lot of trade will lose its value). Nation states will lose much of their power and legitimacy because of defective centralized command organizations (much the way communist economic systems failed) and because their great armies will be ineffective, even irrelevant, in combating the decentralized "swarm intelligence" of the Internet-like terrorist structures.
We can see in the fiascos of the Bush administration with the great George W. as "I'm the Decider" and Dick Cheney and his neocon cronies as Designers, that the view from the top, when it becomes superimposed upon the real world, can lead to disaster. Quite simply the "intelligence" at the top is no match for the independent intelligence spread out among the populace. There is more wisdom in the Internet than in the all the heads in Washington.
However I have departures from Robb's text that I would like to present. First of all he keeps talking about how the terrorists are winning. What are they winning? They kill people and destroy wealth, but what do they gain? Bin Laden may be a hero in the many parts of the Muslim world, but he has gained nothing but that celebrity. The terrorists are creating no wealth. They get their finances through donations, illegal activities, such as dope smuggling, and kidnappings for ransom and the like. Legalize street drugs and stop paying ransoms and where will the bulk of their financing come from? Counterfeiting designer jeans? Stipends from Saudi princes? Currently they are enjoying international notoriety and support partly because of the overreaction of the US. A lot of money goes into homeland security. Little if any of it goes to Al Qaeda. Bush has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iraqi sand, and some of that no doubt is benefitting Al Qaeda, but wiser leaders will come to power in the Western democracies in the future and will not aid the growth of Al Qaeda as Bush and Tony Blair have done.
Robb sees the nation state as at a disadvantage vis-a-vis guerilla organizations. He relies on ideas from Israeli military strategist Martin van Creveld to come to this conclusion (see especially page 28). But guerilla organizations only have an advantage in their homeland against outsiders. Imagine the Vietcong or Al Qaeda conducting a guerilla war while hiding out in the United States. They would not have the support of the populace and without that support a guerilla army is lost.
Robb states that the Bush administration invaded Iraq "to transform the political landscape of the Middle East." (p. 34) This is an after-the-fact justification since the stated reason (WMDs and Al Qaeda connections) was revealed as a lie, and the underlying reason (control of oil--remember Iraqi oil was going to pay for all this) was found not to work. Bush actually invaded Iraq in order to run for a second term as an "at war" president. Being at war also allowed him to greatly increase the power of the executive branch of government. As Commander-in-Chief he pretty much had his way with Congress and the American press, which is the reason he is still strutting around like a peacock.
Robb sees Baloch tribesmen as gaining "returns of investment (ROIs) of at least 1,000 to 1" in their "systems sabotage" attacks in Pakistan. (p. 84) But to use such terminology is a bit silly and is part of where I think Robb goes wrong in his overall analysis. The "return on investment" that the Baloch terrorists or any terrorist organization gets from blowing things up is little or nothing. However, by showing that they can and will sabotage structures and kill people, they may get financial support from those who want the Pakistani government overthrown. That's the way the economics of terrorism work. You don't--to repeat myself--create wealth by destroying wealth, unless you get the contract for rebuilding! Take away the financial support that terrorists are getting and squelch their criminal enterprises and they are out of business.
On page 100 Robb makes a similar point using the term "rates of return" instead of ROI.. He's talking about Nigerian guerillas blowing up Shell Oil facilities and finds that "the rates of return on these attacks are phenomenal." The only return they are going to get is if somebody pays them to stop or they are able to take over the government or the facilities. The (inadvertent, I presume) glorification of terrorists by the Bush administration and the press no doubt gains them some support from somewhere (Iran and Saudi Arabia?).
Despite what I see as errors in Robb's conception and conclusions, I still think this is a very good book that makes some important points. For example Robb predicts that "the knee-jerk solution [to terrorist attacks] will be to centralize security in the hands of the nation-state." But he sees this as "a wrong-headed approach. It will bring us to the brink of a police state for very little benefit." (p. 156) Another good point is from page 158 where Robb states that "preemptive war followed by aggressive nation-building" as a reaction to terrorism and extremism is "wrong." He calls this "the Bush doctrine" which has obviously failed, as he points out on page 160. He notes that Iraq and Afghanistan since the invasions by the United States have "become havens and sources of even more instability than they were before we invaded."
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
Futurist John Robb sees us going through a period in which increasingly things will get very local with people and organizations hiring private security companies to protect them. He sees a breakdown in global trade because of terrorist activities (both oil and security will become so expensive that a lot of trade will lose its value). Nation states will lose much of their power and legitimacy because of defective centralized command organizations (much the way communist economic systems failed) and because their great armies will be ineffective, even irrelevant, in combating the decentralized "swarm intelligence" of the Internet-like terrorist structures.
We can see in the fiascos of the Bush administration with the great George W. as "I'm the Decider" and Dick Cheney and his neocon cronies as Designers, that the view from the top, when it becomes superimposed upon the real world, can lead to disaster. Quite simply the "intelligence" at the top is no match for the independent intelligence spread out among the populace. There is more wisdom in the Internet than in the all the heads in Washington.
However I have departures from Robb's text that I would like to present. First of all he keeps talking about how the terrorists are winning. What are they winning? They kill people and destroy wealth, but what do they gain? Bin Laden may be a hero in the many parts of the Muslim world, but he has gained nothing but that celebrity. The terrorists are creating no wealth. They get their finances through donations, illegal activities, such as dope smuggling, and kidnappings for ransom and the like. Legalize street drugs and stop paying ransoms and where will the bulk of their financing come from? Counterfeiting designer jeans? Stipends from Saudi princes? Currently they are enjoying international notoriety and support partly because of the overreaction of the US. A lot of money goes into homeland security. Little if any of it goes to Al Qaeda. Bush has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iraqi sand, and some of that no doubt is benefitting Al Qaeda, but wiser leaders will come to power in the Western democracies in the future and will not aid the growth of Al Qaeda as Bush and Tony Blair have done.
Robb sees the nation state as at a disadvantage vis-a-vis guerilla organizations. He relies on ideas from Israeli military strategist Martin van Creveld to come to this conclusion (see especially page 28). But guerilla organizations only have an advantage in their homeland against outsiders. Imagine the Vietcong or Al Qaeda conducting a guerilla war while hiding out in the United States. They would not have the support of the populace and without that support a guerilla army is lost.
Robb states that the Bush administration invaded Iraq "to transform the political landscape of the Middle East." (p. 34) This is an after-the-fact justification since the stated reason (WMDs and Al Qaeda connections) was revealed as a lie, and the underlying reason (control of oil--remember Iraqi oil was going to pay for all this) was found not to work. Bush actually invaded Iraq in order to run for a second term as an "at war" president. Being at war also allowed him to greatly increase the power of the executive branch of government. As Commander-in-Chief he pretty much had his way with Congress and the American press, which is the reason he is still strutting around like a peacock.
Robb sees Baloch tribesmen as gaining "returns of investment (ROIs) of at least 1,000 to 1" in their "systems sabotage" attacks in Pakistan. (p. 84) But to use such terminology is a bit silly and is part of where I think Robb goes wrong in his overall analysis. The "return on investment" that the Baloch terrorists or any terrorist organization gets from blowing things up is little or nothing. However, by showing that they can and will sabotage structures and kill people, they may get financial support from those who want the Pakistani government overthrown. That's the way the economics of terrorism work. You don't--to repeat myself--create wealth by destroying wealth, unless you get the contract for rebuilding! Take away the financial support that terrorists are getting and squelch their criminal enterprises and they are out of business.
On page 100 Robb makes a similar point using the term "rates of return" instead of ROI.. He's talking about Nigerian guerillas blowing up Shell Oil facilities and finds that "the rates of return on these attacks are phenomenal." The only return they are going to get is if somebody pays them to stop or they are able to take over the government or the facilities. The (inadvertent, I presume) glorification of terrorists by the Bush administration and the press no doubt gains them some support from somewhere (Iran and Saudi Arabia?).
Despite what I see as errors in Robb's conception and conclusions, I still think this is a very good book that makes some important points. For example Robb predicts that "the knee-jerk solution [to terrorist attacks] will be to centralize security in the hands of the nation-state." But he sees this as "a wrong-headed approach. It will bring us to the brink of a police state for very little benefit." (p. 156) Another good point is from page 158 where Robb states that "preemptive war followed by aggressive nation-building" as a reaction to terrorism and extremism is "wrong." He calls this "the Bush doctrine" which has obviously failed, as he points out on page 160. He notes that Iraq and Afghanistan since the invasions by the United States have "become havens and sources of even more instability than they were before we invaded."
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
September 24, 2008
John Robb has an intimate understanding of guerrilla networks and global terrorist/criminal organizations, but makes light of the security reality of highly armed states threatening their neighbor states via conventional war (North/South Korea, China/Taiwan, India/Pakistan). His examples are dated and ignore the real security gains earned in Iraq over the last 18 months. While loose networks are difficult to defeat kinetically, winning the contest of wills is not impossible if a state is willing to commit the necessary resources to win the hearts and minds of the people in the guerrilla’s key operating area. That population is the key terrain in upcoming confrontations.
July 26, 2017
I came across John Robb by reading his blog global guerrillas. The book is a condensed version of the topics he keeps referring to often in his blog. The book primarily deals with fourth generation warfare and explains why we will not see wars between nation states anytime soon. There is a lot of original thinking , though in some areas he predicted radical change to occur by 2016 which has not quite happened but the underlying currents have been predicted correctly.
more at :https://thefutureofhumanhistory.wordp...
more at :https://thefutureofhumanhistory.wordp...
March 19, 2009
I felt this book kept repeating itself and could have told me in about a 3 page journal article what it did in a 188 page book. I didn't finish the last 35 pages because I just couldn't read it anymore. I did find it interesting about the smaller attacks on infrastructure, rather than taking out the leader and calling it a day. It's also a little unnerving just how fragile every country really is.
August 7, 2022
Robb discusses terrorism and defense against terrorism as the essence of modern warfare. On one level his prescriptions might be too alarmist but on another they’re practical.
July 3, 2016
Essential reading for its perspective and analysis, regardless of one's stance on Robb's motivations, predictions and prescriptions.
October 21, 2023
It used to be that most conflicts were between states, or were civil wars in which the contending sides strove to gain control of the state. Increasingly in the twenty-first century, technology and globalization have empowered small insurgent groups who operate independently of states and seek to damage them. This sometimes happens through dramatic, 9/11-style attacks, but it's more frequently small, localized vandalism of infrastructure, such as oil pipelines or electricity grids. These attacks do outsized damage and bleed states of revenue and of legitimacy (because the states can't provide reliable basic services). There is a temptation for open liberal democracies to crack down on civil liberties in an attempt to prevent these kinds of assaults. Robb recommends devolving capabilities from a slow-moving central state bureaucracy to its citizenry, empowering them to quickly adjust to unforeseen crises.
I'm glossing over a subtle and complex argument, replete with specific terms like "fourth generation warfare", "black swans", "swarming", and "long tails". The author is most convincing in describing the emergence of self-sustaining, constantly-improving marketplaces of insurgency and how they can create major havoc in a state's foreign and domestic policies with small investments of resources and effort. His prescriptions for how states can deal with this new situation are more nebulous and could perhaps be the subject of a separate book. Altogether, the work is still relevant and readable even after the Iraq and Chechen wars have wound down in the past decade and a half.
I'm glossing over a subtle and complex argument, replete with specific terms like "fourth generation warfare", "black swans", "swarming", and "long tails". The author is most convincing in describing the emergence of self-sustaining, constantly-improving marketplaces of insurgency and how they can create major havoc in a state's foreign and domestic policies with small investments of resources and effort. His prescriptions for how states can deal with this new situation are more nebulous and could perhaps be the subject of a separate book. Altogether, the work is still relevant and readable even after the Iraq and Chechen wars have wound down in the past decade and a half.
September 27, 2023
A quick read by an Air Force veteran and expert in counterterrorism, about how the nature of warfare changed in the 2000s, with "superempowered invididuals" being able to exploit global networks and wreak havoc against ostensibly more powerful nation-state adversaries. Robb calls them "global guerillas" and their most famous act would be the September 11 attack on the WTC twin towers. Robb goes into details on other such attacks of the time period, demonstrating how cost-effective they are. I would put this book into the category of strategic analysis inspired by the War on Terror, arguing about how we need to rethink security. He borrows ideas from both Philip Bobbitt (the market state) and Thomas P. M. Barnett (the Gap and the need for a SysAdmin military force), but clearly respects the former author's ideas more than the latter's. He seems to believe that "open-source networks" are going to lead us to a world of endless chaos, though he does end his book on a positive note about how we can defend against such threats through innovation and resilience. Altogether an interesting read, though a bit disoarganized, and more descriptive than prescriptive.
October 24, 2022
Proof positive that prognostication is a dangerous business. Written in 2007, Robb's book takes the end of the nation-state as we have known it as a fait accompli, and posits that "global guerrillas" are the wave of the future in warfare. Several times he presents as fact the argument that state-on-state warfare is a thing of the past. The final chapter of this book was a laugh-out-loud ride through the world of 2016 as the author believed (in 2006) that it would be, including the collapse and fragmentation of China, the mass privatization of security in the developed world, and widespread adoption of so-called "green technologies" (I'm still unclear what some of that has to do with the subtitle of his book). Yes, there are perhaps pockets and sectors where some of those things have been taking place, but Robb took the prediction to an extreme conclusion.
June 11, 2021
As this book is discussing the Iraq and Afghan Wars, it's a bit dated, but also prescient since many of its predictions have come to pass. It has had an impact on military strategists and is well respected in modern military thinking. It's also optimistic, detailed in its ideas and impressively dodges that casuistry and intellectual cop-out of having yet another Marshall Plan to solve all our problems. Most books make a detailed analysis of the problem, then simply say we need a Marshall Plan. Not this author: he grabs the subject matter, wrestles with it and even comes up with some original and compelling ideas how to combat the shifting terrain of guerrillas and terrorists. He also examines how the nation-state has to evolve if it wants to survive.
May 30, 2020
A rather self-evident dunking on the Bush administrations (mis)understanding of and objective of eliminating terrorism globally. The things he was projecting for by 2016 haven't exactly panned out and may provide insights into the limits of nerdistic theorizing. Real power hasn't been dissolved down more locally and the market approach to security hasn't weakened national governments also the government of the PRC hasn't been successfully delegitimized or balkanized but it does look like the American constitutional crisis is just further intensifying.
November 15, 2019
This was an interesting read -- Robb is a good synthesizer of disparate ideas, and while some of the material felt a little glossed-over, it still had plenty of meat to it overall. A more realistic take on some of the near-future positions seen in The Sovereign Individual, with a greater emphasis on physical security and more plausible-sounding systems of governance in a market-oriented framework.
July 11, 2019
Loved this book. His blog is more current, even so the examples make the case for decentralization. I led a book salon discussion about John Robb's interview with Mark Pesce -- the subtext was "Are Facebook and China racing to become each other?"
May 4, 2022
Prescient book, some of his predictions have missed but the section on pandemics played out pretty much exactly the past two years. Lots of basics on network theory etc. Interesting and highly recommended.
August 2, 2022
Some powerful ideas
Well, this was written long enough ago to make many of the predictions obsolete, but that made it a more interesting book. Seeing where he was right and where things followed a different course was really informative.
Well, this was written long enough ago to make many of the predictions obsolete, but that made it a more interesting book. Seeing where he was right and where things followed a different course was really informative.
May 13, 2018
started out like dated futurism, but got more interesting as the book went on. i like the idea of building community-based systems resilience, ala prepping "lite".
February 20, 2019
On War for the 21st century.
May 25, 2020
Repetition of old concepts and outdated "news".
Full of obvious conclusions.
Large mistakes showing misundestanding of basic concepts, mainly regarding things outside of US.
Full of obvious conclusions.
Large mistakes showing misundestanding of basic concepts, mainly regarding things outside of US.
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January 30, 2021Smart analysis of chaos but 2016 predictions way off
October 22, 2023
This book was awesome and predicts many modern day terror tactics we are seeing today.
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