Al-Qaeda's Shape

So the Times is reporting that "senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, told the House Armed Services Committee last week that Al Qaeda “is on the march.” He said, “Al Qaeda in fact is now functioning exactly as its founder and leader, Osama bin Laden, envisioned it,” because, he said, Qaeda leaders are planning major attacks and inspiring militants to carry out attacks around the globe.

But what does that mean? And what does that network look like, anyway? John Robb, one of the smartest thinkers out there on the evolution of war and terror, argues that most conceptions of Al-Qaeda and the like have been way off. Rather than those funky matrix diagrams we've all seen -- where nearly every node somehow links -- terror groups look (and function) much more like "directional scale-free networks." Robb explains:

Scale-free networks are typically depicted by a set of nodes that are symmetrically connected (I link to you, you link to me). The dynamic flows that travel through those networks... can travel in both directions across symmetric links. However, that doesn't actually happen in many real world networks [where] links have direction (I link to a major hub, and it doesn't link back to me)... [There's]

a central core of highly connected (via bidirectional links) nodes, an IN continent (links in), an OUT continent (links out), and various other structures (a Tube of connections between IN/OUT continents, Tendrils that feed into each continent, and islands that are clusters of affiliated but unconnected nodes).

When you apply the directional scale-free network model to al Qaeda, you see a fairly good fit... Here's how it works. Al Qaeda's flow starts in connections from the feeder networks within the IN continent that instill a common animating narrative (Madrasahs, etc.). This common narrative drives social clusters to seek connections with the central core (bin Laden and associates) which will eventually transition them to become operational assets (terrorist cells) in the OUT continent.

Okay, okay. It's a little dense. But check out the diagrams, and the shape of these networks becomes a whole lot more clear.

Also, it's important to note that Robb wrote this, before today's Times report. He's still "working out the network implications" if Al-Qaeda's leadership is indeed rebuilding their power. But one thing is clear to Robb from the outset: "larger attacks can and will be launched."