Global Physics: From Percolation to Terrorism, Guerilla Warfare and Clandestine Activities

TL;DR

This paper models the spread of terrorism and clandestine activities as a percolation process in a multi-dimensional social space, proposing strategies to increase the percolation threshold and suppress widespread support.

Contribution

It introduces a novel percolation-based framework for understanding and controlling the spread of terrorism and clandestine activities across social and geographical spaces.

Findings

Passive supporter percolation explains terrorism spread

Suppressing percolation can prevent widespread clandestine activities

Model applies to various illegal and covert operations

Abstract

The September 11 attack on the US has revealed an unprecedented terrorism with worldwide range of destruction. It is argued to result from the first worldwide percolation of passive supporters. They are people sympathetic to the terrorism cause but without being involved with it. They just don't oppose it in case they could. This scheme puts suppression of the percolation as the major strategic issue in the fight against terrorism. Acting on the population is shown to be useless. Instead a new strategic scheme is suggested to increase the terrorism percolation threshold and in turn suppress the percolation. The relevant associated space is identified as a multi-dimensional social space including both the ground earth surface and all various independent flags displayed by the terrorist group. Some hints are given on how to shrink the geographical spreading of terrorism threat. The model apply to a large spectrum of clandestine activities including guerilla warfare as well as tax evasion, corruption, illegal gambling, illegal prostitution and black markets.