From the monthly archives:

January 2009

Red Teaming Criminal Insurgency

by John Sullivan and Adam Elkus on January 30, 2009

The specter of criminal insurgency is haunting the police stations and barracks of North America. Powerful criminal networks increasingly challenge the state’s monopoly on force, creating new threats to national security. Mexico is currently deteriorating under the weight of criminal violence,1 but it is by no means the only state in the Americas suffering from criminal insurgency. We are seeing a general rise in the power of transnational criminal organizations ranging from the street collective MS-13 to the powerful Mexican drug cartels—and the threat could hit us very close to home. Even American street gangs are increasingly evolving into “third generation” gangs: large, networked, transnational bodies that may yet develop true political consciousness.2 [click to continue ...]

Notes:

  1. See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “State of Siege: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, August 2008. [↩]
  2. John P. Sullivan has written extensively on “third generation gangs” in many different forums. See especially John P. Sullivan, “Transnational Gangs: The Impact of Third Generation Gangs in Central America,” Air & Space Power Journal (Spanish Edition), Second Trimester 2008 at http://airpower.maxwell.af.mil.apjintrnational/apj-s/2008/2tri08/sullivan eng.htm for a discussion of recent developments related to transnational gangs. [↩]

Attack Tree Analysis

by Terrance Ingoldsby on January 16, 2009

Defenders have always tried to anticipate the behavior of their adversaries in order to thwart attacks or reduce the damage they will cause. Historically, this process has been done primarily through intuition. Although it is difficult to identify all of the factors that lead to intuition, it would seem to be based principally on an individual’s experiences, and the ability to extrapolate how those experiences apply to new situations. Obviously the accuracy of the intuition will depend heavily on the breadth of the analyst’s experience and their powers of reasoning. Even if an individual can be found who possesses excellent intuition, it is almost impossible to transfer this knowledge to anyone else, or even to capture and explain the reasoning behind their understanding. [click to continue ...]