John Arquilla

John Arquilla (born 1954) received a PhD in International Relations from Stanford in 1991. He worked at RAND for several years, before joining the faculty of the US Naval Postgraduate School in 1993.

He has written many articles and books on the future of warfare. He continues to provide consulting for RAND^{[citation needed]} and was one of many advisors to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who like Arquilla is an admirer of Andrew Marshall's RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs).^{[citation needed]}

Military networks

Arquilla has promoted the idea of adapting militaries from a hierarchical structure to a network structure, suggesting that only the network military will be the most able to defeat terrorist networks.

He also points to the Roman concept of organized legions defeating the previous military paradigm of the Phalanx. Likewise, terrorist networks have evolved while older Cold War militaries hold on to antiquated paradigms. Network cells can share precise information on a need to know basis without a hierarchical structure. This gives them the ability to disperse and "swarm" in an extremely effective manner, as witnessed by the 9/11 attacks.

Cyberwar

As militaries become increasingly dependent on computer automation, they also become more vulnerable to computer attack. After the first Gulf War, Arquilla co-authored Networks and Netwars, a book about this cyber threat.

Arquilla is interviewed at some length on the value of hackers in military roles in the documentary film Hackers Wanted.

Arquilla's arguments for the US to use cyber war as an instrument of conflict prevention in areas such as South Asia, as described in a recent Wired article, have earned him serious criticism from Pakistani writers and web journals, such as TechLahore.

Quotations

• "A resistance network has the power to prevail against an enemy whose strategy is based on territorial conquest."

• "Such organizational restructuring would take us from competing hierarchies to cooperating networks. It's a win-win solution, giving us our best chance of heading off a new attack on American soil."

• "The mass public is far more understanding of the exigencies of wartime than they are given credit for." - from a July 2010 class held by Arquilla at the Naval Postgraduate School

See also

• Cyber-terrorism
• Cyberwar
• Information Warfare

External links

• Resume
• bio
• Article
• Conversations with History - International Relations in the Information Age - Video Interview
• Works by or about John Arquilla in libraries (WorldCat catalog)