RAND_MR1382

esponse. Finally, TEW utilizes an “intelligence toolbox” consisting of virtual reachback
to technical specialists or advanced technology tools (forensic intelligence support such
as plume modeling, field analytical and laboratory capabilities, decision models, and
gaming) to help project incident consequences and the event horizon.
Figure 4.2—Terrorism Early Warning Group/Net Assessment Organization
Since its inception, TEW has employed open source intelligence (OSINT), including links
to networked Internet-based OSINT tools and relationships with external academic
specialists to scan the horizon for emerging threats and to act as a forum for monitoring
specific threats, building response capabilities, and supporting decisionmaking efforts.
As such, TEW forms a network to speed an integrated and effective response to a range
of threats—networked and otherwise. Recognition of these threats and use of the
benefits that may stem from networked forms of organization are essential to limiting
the growing, evolving specters of big-city gangs, transnational organized criminal
enterprises, and terrorism, as well as the possible blending of these adversaries into
compound netwarriors.
1 This chapter’s discussion of the capacity of street gangs to evolve into netwarriors originated in John P. Sullivan, “Third
Generation Street Gangs: Turf, Cartels and Net-warriors,” Crime & Justice International, Vol. 13, Number 10, November
1997. An expanded version of that paper appears in Transnational Organized Crime, Vol. 3, No. 2, Autumn 1997. The
author thanks Robert J. Bunker for his insightful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
2 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “A New Epoch—and Spectrum—of Conflict,” in John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt,
eds., In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1997, p. 5.
3 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: The Free Press, 1991.