Saturday, March 17, 2007

Rational Terrorists and Optimal Network Structure

An article by Walter Enders and Xuejuan Su recently published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution: "After the events of 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism became more proactive in that the Patriot Act allowed the authorities far more freedom to directly attack terrorist network structures. We argue that rational terrorists will attempt to thwart such policies and restructure themselves to be less penetrable. We model the trade-off between security and intragroup communication faced by terrorists. The model is used to derive the anticipated changes in network structure and the consequent changes in the type, complexity, and success rate of potential terrorist attacks". An article by

No comments: