Perspective Intelligence

The first crisis of globalization

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has referred to the financial crisis of 2008 as the ‘first crisis of globalization’.  This is a great descriptive applied to the wrong problem.  Al-Qaeda was the first crisis of modern globalization.  Financial crashes have previously infected inter-connected markets, but never before has a non-state group been able to set the global security agenda.  Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden were able to do this by applying a mixture of medieval religious ideology and guerilla warfare to the dominant tools of globalization. Al-Qaeda seemingly understood the strengths, weakness and opportunities of globalization and exploited them for increasingly empty violent aims.  The use of adaptive financial tools in the form of hawala banking, co-opting the apparatus of failed states and most spectacularly both weaponizing and de-stabilizing one of the primary drivers of globalization, in the form of civil aviation, allowed al-Qaeda to strike internationally.  Al-Qaeda also virtualized itself and quickly moved into the new media space opened up by the explosion of the Internet but this also exposed its weakness as the Arab Spring has bloomed.  Information wants to be free and al-Qaeda is poisoned by freedom.  Al-Qaeda has been described as innovative and it certainly was the first movement out of the gate to exploit the conditions the world moved toward following the end of the Cold War.  However, this particular crisis should now be regarded as closed.  The United States and its western allies have formed effective tools to respond to threats such as al-Qaeda. Building new military systems and emphasizing technology, information use, surveillance systems and Special Forces have proven to be an effective doctrinal response — and are also appropriately what finally put an end to al-Qaeda’s leader.

Much commentary has been devoted to the threat of revenge attacks in the wake of Bin Laden’s death and the direction al-Qaeda will now go. However, the pace of change in the world has in some ways left al-Qaeda and its affiliates behind.  The compound in Pakistan had no telephone link or Internet connection – no attempt at sophisticated cyber operations, no flag planted in the now dominant tool of globalization, information. Bin Laden’s wars do bequeath a legacy and one, which is worth noting. The rise of non-state teams in both creating and defending global security threats is here to stay and suggests the continued prominence of corporate or non-state security in defeating threats to the global security system. Bin Laden’s greatest success is to leave a toolbox on the battlefield, which can be adapted and reused by the next group or individual who seeks global mayhem.  The twentieth centuries total war has been replaced by the semi-privatized constant war.

The great danger now is that the defenders of global security will not re-calibrate their systems quickly enough to deal with new and emerging threats as the global security terrain rapidly shifts.  Al-Qaeda affiliates do retain the ambition to act globally (certainly the threat from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb shouldn’t be currently discounted) but much of the counter-terrorist machinery established to defeat this crisis needs to be quickly re-calibrated to face new threats.  Al-Qaeda affiliates are now part of an old military doctrine and as such can be understood and defeated.  Homegrown extremists do present an internal threat, which is harder to counter within the west’s social and political structures but this will not become an existential global security threat.

The decade since 9/11 has been one of accelerating technological change roughly tracking Moore’s law and the new security threats will follow this arc rather than being vacuum-sealed in the Afghanistan of the late 1990s.  Exploiting the tools of globalization again through finance, information and the choke points of the global economy will provide the next set of global guerillas their opportunity.  Non-State security systems are going to remain in the forefront of recognizing and responding to these threats, the landscape has changed sufficiently to begin suggesting that Google and Facebook are already some of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world.  It would of course be absurd to suggest they could have conducted the raid against Bin Laden but the knowledge and expertise in these companies may be what is needed for the battle against the west’s enemies in ten years time. More money, information, and raw power now exists in private hands as a consequence of globalization – how this power is adapted and applied will likely form the backdrop to the security challenges of the future.

The next crisis of globalization

A simple observation now reveals this changed landscape.  Individuals, companies and national organizations face a more deadly threat to their operations from Anonymous, its loose affiliates and fellow travelers than from Al-Qaeda.  Anonymous and its eco-sphere has shown itself adept at creating destructive mayhem with information.  By adapting this dominant tool of globalization much as al-Qaeda did a generation ago Anonymous and groups like it are increasingly politicized radicalized and dangerous.  New and important threats are developing on a dark-net, behind an encrypted IRC channel, privately funded to support a violent enterprise.  The destruction of Sony’s online gaming business leaving behind the telltale ‘We are legion’ signature, neatly demonstrates the security power-shift, which has occurred. The exposure of strategic systems reliant on information, such as financial markets, to this developing threat is truly frightening.