Global Guerrillas

EXPORTING SYSTEMS DISRUPTION

The ETA, a Basque seperatist group, has adopted global guerrilla tactics. Last week they disrupted energy exports from France to Spain by bombing a high voltage power line.
France is a major power exporter, and operates two 400 kV lines and two 220 kV lines that carry power into Spain. This week, the ETA placed two more bombs on these power lines. A warning to the authorities allowed them to find one device, they are still searching for the second (there is one conduit on each doast and one in the middle -- see diagram. The likely target is on the western coast.).

In addition to the ETA, Nigerian guerrillas are moving towards global guerrilla tactics. Alhaji Dobuko, a warlord and muslim convert who admires Osama bin Laden, has directed his group (the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force) to attack oil infrastructure (or oil industry personnel) in order to put pressure on the government. His threat is puts at risk 1-2.5 million plus barrels a day of oil and is largely responsible for driving the price of oil to recent record highs.

Global guerrilla tactics are not restricted to Islamic groups or the Middle East. These tactics can be exported. The focus of these efforts: increase the financial costs of ownership (of the Basque region or the Niger river delta) until it cannot be sustained. Also: disrupt daily life for as many people as possible.

THE BAZAAR'S OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM

Earlier analysis (see the "The Optimal Size of a Terrorist Network" for more) indicates that the disruption of al Qaeda network mega-hub in Afghanistan has put strict limits on the size of the surviving virtual network elements. This size limitation may represent a barrier to attacks on the US, but is likely well within the capabilities of what is necessary for limited regional attacks. However, new innovations in group dynamics and the emergence of new unaffiliated guerrilla networks in Iraq may provide a method for regaining strategic capability.

The Bazaar
The decentralized, and seemingly chaotic guerrilla war in Iraq demonstrates a pattern that will likely serve as a model for next generation terrorists. This pattern shows a level of learning, activity, and success similar to what we see in the open source software community. I call this pattern the bazaar. The bazaar solves the problem: how do small, potentially antagonistic networks combine to conduct war? Lessons from Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" provides a starting point for further analysis. Here are the factors that apply (from the perspective of the guerrillas):

• Release early and often. Try new forms of attacks against different types of targets early and often. Don’t wait for a perfect plan.
  
• Given a large enough pool of co-developers, any difficult problem will be seen as obvious by someone, and solved. Eventually some participant of the bazaar will find a way to disrupt a particularly difficult target. All you need to do is copy the process they used.
  
• Your co-developers (beta-testers) are your most valuable resource. The other guerrilla networks in the bazaar are your most valuable allies. They will innovate on your plans, swarm on weaknesses you identify, and protect you by creating system noise.
  
• Recognize good ideas from your co-developers. Simple attacks that have immediate and far-reaching impact should be adopted.
  
• Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away (simplicity). The easier the attack is, the more easily it will be adopted. Complexity prevents swarming that both amplifies and protects.
  
• Tools are often used in unexpected ways. An attack method can often find reuse in unexpected ways.

Scaling the Bazaar
The bazaar dynamic -- replete with stigmergic learning and entrepreneurial ventures -- is vibrant enough to keep Iraq in a state of chaos. The statistics speak for themselves. However, can the bazaar be exported to regional nations or strategic targets? Can it serve as a post Afghanistan (post al Qaeda) model for global guerrilla warfare? Yes. Here's why:

• Leveraged attacks. As we see in Iraq, if appropriately planned, small attacks can have amazing impact. The reason behind this are the system dynamics that amplify results. ROIs (returns on investment) in excess of one million fold have been measured in Iraq. This means that smaller groups can have tremendous impact at the strategic level if they adopt the Iraqi method.
  
• Swarms vs. single group activity. The bazaar offers the potential of many smaller attacks that can in aggregate have an impact equal to several large attacks. Many hands make light work. Combined with system leverage, this could reduce a nation to economic chaos in short order.
  
• Rapid innovation. The bazaar's demonstrated ability to provide rapid innovatation makes defense much extremely difficult. Rather than a single 9/11 style attack, we may see small attacks (less planning and training, fewer people, less support) against a plethora of targets. With a sufficient number of guerrilla networks unearthing vulnerabilities (particularly ones with system's leverage), security forces will likey be outmatched.

JOURNAL: Global Guerrilla Credo

“We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us and by our rules.” Shamil Basayev, the author of the Beslan massacre (from a Chechen website).

JOURNAL: Cascades in Iraq

Global guerrillas are getting extremely adept at attacking systems. Iraq was hit with a multi-infrastructure cascade of failure on Tuesday. Saboteurs blew up oil pipelines at a juncture where they cross the Tigris River (co-location dependency -- See Infrastructure Meltdowns for more). This cut exports via Turkey. The pipelines also feed the nearby Beiji power plant (input and mutual dependency). The oil flowed down onto the water and created a sea of flaming oil. The Beiji plant was immediately shut down due to fears of fire spreading to the plant (update, it is claimed an adjacent cable shorted and shut down the powerplant). This rapid shutdown resulted in a wave of cascading electrical failures throughout the entire country (see Cascading System Failure for more). At one point the ALL of Iraq was without power.

This attack demonstrates a qualitative improvement in system attacks, the quantitative improvement can be seen in the attached graphic from Brookings. Oil exports are a mere ~60% of stated goals (and still below pre-war levels). Total losses from oil system disruption now exceed $2 billion. Electricity production is likely (no good data is available, but anecdotal information is available) half of demand -- not nearly enough to support economic revival. Other resources: "Iraq: Electricity Disruption" "JOURNAL: More on Iraqi Electricity"

JOURNAL: Detailed Knowledge of Networks

Global guerrillas need detailed knowledge of infrastructure networks in order to maximize the leverage of their system attacks. The hundreds of attacks on the Iraqi oil system over the last year demonstrate that some groups already have detailed knowledge of the system's topology. This knowledge has recently been augmented. Islam-online reports:

..top-secret CDs were stolen from the (oil) ministry last week in a highly professional and quick operation. They contain vital information about the country’s oil installations and locations of pipelines.

JOURNAL: Target Saudi Arabia

In a recent interview by Jamestown with Dr. al-Faqih (I referenced his analysis for the post Superpower Baiting), he makes a case for an attack on Saudi Arabia later this fall (and as anticipated by this author, on the oil installations):

There are reports by the Ministry of Interior that their agents had detected a sudden decrease in the "chatter" or communications of the Jihadi groups. They are worried that this sudden scaling down of activities signifies a new tactic by the Jihadis and could be the harbinger of more ominous things to come...
They might attack the oil installations for double effect. Firstly it reduces international confidence in the Saudi regime and secondly it has a significant global impact. This fulfils bin Laden's ambitions of sabotaging the American economy. Furthermore it is possible that they could change their mind and start targeting regime figures... I think they will not attack before Bush is re-elected in November. Al-Qaeda is praying for a Bush victory, because Bush is facilitating the polarization between the Muslim and Western worlds and he is causing more and more Muslims to hate America.

JOURNAL: Beslan

Let's put the horrible attack in Beslan in perspective. Like 9/11 and the Madrid bombings, it was a perfect example of classic terrorist tactics, unbounded by the traditional limits of state sponsorship. It serves to heighten passions. These passions can ignite aggressive military action (superpower baiting) or isolation. Both serve the needs of the guerrillas.

As we have seen, an attack(s) of this type can induce (ala Boyd):

1. Physical isolation. A rift between Russia and its allies in its rush towards unilateral action. An imperial presidency that doesn't heed critics.
   
2. Mental isolation. The novelty of the attack undermines previous planning efforts. What should we defend? Who's the enemy? Chechens or al Qaeda? Confusion.
   
3. Moral isolation. Justification for its bloody tactics in Chechnya -- a blind eye to linkage. "Our security trumps all other concerns."

GLOBAL GUERRILLA TARGET: The North American Power Grid

A long term target of global guerrillas in our emerging war, will be the large infrastructure networks that our national economy relies upon (as do all modern developed economies). The most critical and complex network is our power grid which contains over 1 m kilometers of high-voltage power lines between 115 -765 kVs. The network can be further subdivided into the following:

• 1,633 generator nodes.
  
• 2,179 disribution substation nodes.
  
• 10,287 transmission substation nodes.

Network Analysis
In recent paper, "Structural Vulnerability of the North American Power Grid," Reka Albert (et. al.) analyzed the vulnerability of the power grid based on modern techniques (see "Cascading System Failure" for more on the vulnerability of scale free networks). The key to this analysis is to find those nodes that serve as "hubs" for the network. The hubs, if taken out during an attack, have the greatest likelihood to disrupt the network and create a cascade of failure. They found the following:

• Highly connected nodes are a mix. Power engineering principles correctly suggest that the majority of highly connected nodes will be power plants (see "Design Flaws: Methods of Attacking Critical Infrastructure" for more). However, contrary to expectations, a small number of transmission substation nodes serve are also highly connected -- 50 have a degree higher than 10.
  
• 1% of the transmission substations are high load nodes. These high load substations are nodes with high betweeness (a high load of shortest paths between nodes on the network). These substations aren't necessarily highly connected nodes and some are merely high load throughput for long-haul connectivity (a critical part of the US power grid since 50% of the electricity generated is allocated via the wholesale market, much of it over long distances due to NIMBY restrictions on local power production). High load nodes are best termed the "hubs" of the network.
  
• 900 of the distribution substations can potentially become isolated clusters (41% of the total). This means that these substations are only lightly connected to the grid. If the transmission substation that connects them is taken off-line via an attack, they are disconnected from power generation and go dark.

Methods of Attack
This research indicates the potential success of different modes of global guerrilla attack against a modern power grid:

• Attacks on power substations and their direct connectivity will have little impact. The high degree of redundancy at the power substation level prevents major system failure. This is in stark contrast to the simple, production limited system in Iraq (see "Iraq: Electricity Disruption" for more) where the removal of a power plant from the grid will have a major impact. A big caveat on this "finding" is: this analysis doesn't account for "base power" generation from large producers (hydro-electric and nuclear). Power production isn't homogeneous. The elimination of these large systems from the grid would result in major disruption.
  
• Attacks on transmission substations yields the greatest system impact. In general, the removal of high load substations is more important than highly connected substations. A loss of only 4% of the highest load transmission hubs disconnects 60% of the grid from power.
  
• Cascading failures can amplify the impact of high-load node removal. Cascading failure can shut down 60% of the grid with the removal of only 2% of the high-load nodes. If 1% are removed, 40% of the grid goes dark. I suspect that better analysis based on sorting the high-load nodes by the quality of their connections (based on voltage, with the high quality nodes as those with the largest number of high voltage connections) would radically reduce the number of failed nodes needed for a system-wide cascade.

End Note: The implication is that an carefully prepared simultaneous attack against 10-20 substations of the right type could take 60% of the US end-users offline for an extended period (potentially weeks). If exploited by additional well planned attacks, this damage could be extended indefinitely.

The solution to all of this type of vulnerability, isn't a complete rework of the grid. Instead, it's a resilient community. A community that produces most of what it needs locally.