Brave New War

How can small, loosely connected groups defeat the most powerful militaries on earth? In Brave New War, John Robb argues that the future of conflict will no longer be shaped by nation-states but by decentralized, networked groups — guerrillas, terrorists, criminals, and hackers — empowered by globalization and technology. These new actors, which he calls “global guerrillas,” can disrupt entire nations using small, inexpensive, yet strategically devastating attacks on critical systems.

Robb contends that warfare has entered a new evolutionary phase. For the first time in history, nonstate actors can wage war on states — and win — not by conquering territory or overthrowing governments, but by causing systems to fail. Through methods like systems disruption, open-source warfare, and black swan attacks, they exploit the vulnerabilities of our hyperconnected world. These methods turn globalization’s strengths — efficiency, interdependence, and speed — into liabilities.

A World of Superempowered Individuals

Robb begins with what he calls the “superempowered competition”: the idea that as technology becomes cheaper and more widespread, individuals and small groups gain levels of power once reserved for states. The same tools that fuel commerce — from the Internet to global finance networks — also enable insurgents to organize, communicate, and strike at will. These groups don’t need aircraft carriers; a single hacker, engineer, or chemist can exert massive influence.

Robb connects this rise in asymmetric power to the decentralizing forces of globalization. Just as networks have dismantled hierarchies in business and culture (as argued in Manuel Castells’ The Rise of the Network Society), they also give birth to a “bazaar of violence.” Once, that bazaar was contained within rogue states or failed regimes; now it spreads across borders, thriving in the ungoverned spaces of the Internet and global markets.

From Nation-State Security to Systemic Vulnerability

The modern state depends on complex, tightly coupled systems — energy grids, supply chains, communications, and transport — that deliver the lifeblood of civilization. Yet those same systems are fragile. Even minor disruptions can trigger cascading failures. Robb notes that Iraq’s insurgency demonstrated how small, cheap attacks on oil pipelines could cripple national economies. A $2,000 bomb destroying a key junction might cause $500 million in losses — a “return on investment” any guerrilla would envy.

This strategy — systems disruption — reveals a profound shift in the logic of war. Instead of trying to defeat armies, global guerrillas aim to make states appear incompetent by interrupting the services people rely on. In a world where legitimacy depends on prosperity and functionality, chaos becomes a weapon. (Compare this insight to Martin van Creveld’s The Transformation of War, which similarly predicted the erosion of the state monopoly on organized violence.)

The Iraq War as a Testing Ground

Robb views the Iraq war as the “Spanish Civil War” of the twenty-first century — a rehearsal for future global conflicts. In Iraq, insurgents and terrorists pioneered open-source tactics: hundreds of small groups learning, copying, and sharing innovations in real time. Each new IED, oil-pipeline attack, or kidnapping served as a lesson for others. The result was a distributed, self-correcting network that could adapt faster than the world’s most powerful military machine.

Robb saw in Iraq the emergence of an “open-source insurgency,” where any group could join the fight, contribute an idea, and test it live. These decentralized cells were bound not by hierarchy but by a shared “plausible promise” — the belief that they could make the occupation fail. As chaos spread, Iraq’s government appeared powerless, confirming that premise. Similar patterns are now visible, Robb warns, from the Niger Delta to Pakistan’s tribal zones — and even in the cyber underground that fuels global crime.

War Meets Globalization

Paradoxically, globalization has made states both more powerful and more fragile. The same systems that allow global markets and supply chains to thrive — interconnectivity, efficiency, automation — also magnify the effects of disruption. In Robb’s chilling phrase, “globalization will put an end to globalization.” The rise of superempowered individuals, amplified by transnational criminal ties and online collaboration, produces a self-sustaining loop of instability.

If that sounds dystopian, Robb doesn’t stop there. He envisions how societies must evolve — toward resilience and decentralized security. Rather than trying to protect every target or rebuild failed states, citizens, cities, and companies must learn to absorb shocks and self-organize, much as open-source software projects or resilient ecosystems do. In effect, he argues, survival in the twenty-first century requires becoming as adaptive and networked as the enemies we face.

Why These Ideas Matter

Robb’s message matters because it forces you to rethink what “security” means. The old notion of safety through central control — a strong government, a fortified border, a dominant army — no longer holds in a world of distributed power. Whether you’re running a business, managing infrastructure, or planning community resilience, Robb’s framework challenges you to design systems that can withstand and recover from failure rather than prevent it absolutely.

As globalization deepens and technology advances, you, too, become a node in a vast, interdependent network. The book’s message is unsettling but empowering: the world will inevitably face more disruption, but survival — for nations, cities, and individuals — lies not in fear but in adaptation. Brave New War is, in short, a call to embrace the same decentralization that fuels our greatest threats — and harness it for our own resilience.

Robb’s first major idea is that the age of state-versus-state warfare is over. Nuclear deterrence, coupled with economic interdependence, has made large-scale wars between developed nations nearly impossible. Instead, we have entered the era of superempowered groups — small, agile, and globally connected actors who can punch far above their weight.

The Superempowered Competition

A “superempowered group” is any collection of individuals who, by leveraging technology, networks, and global systems, can challenge nation-states without traditional military power. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked airplanes and inflicted billions in economic damage — an act of war that bypassed all conventional defense systems. Their success wasn’t an anomaly; it was a harbinger of things to come.

Robb shows how technological trends like Moore’s law, the Internet, and ubiquitous computing have decentralized power. Every year, smaller teams — or even lone individuals — can wield tools once reserved for powerful governments: drones, AI, biotechnology, and cyberweapons. He warns that in a few decades “one man will be able to declare war on the world — and win.” (Ray Kurzweil’s predictions of accelerating technological change frame a similar trajectory toward individual empowerment.)

Technology’s Dual-Use Paradox

Technology is morally neutral — it amplifies both creation and destruction. Robb calls this the “technology paradox.” The same innovations that make your smartphone incredible can also make it a weapon. For instance, GPS technology guides both civilian cars and lethal missiles. Sony’s PlayStation 2 contained processing power sufficient to steer a bomb. In a world where anyone can order sophisticated components online, the line between gamer and guerrilla blurs.

Moreover, networks like the Internet are global commons: no state can control them without stifling its own economy. That openness, while essential for growth, grants bad actors easy access to infrastructure and knowledge. The future Robb envisions isn’t cyberpunk fiction; it’s a sober mapping of where today’s exponential technologies inevitably lead.

From Great Powers to Agile Networks

The U.S. military, Robb notes, still plans for conventional wars — building fleets and divisions for conflicts that will never happen. Yet adversaries have already shifted to networked warfare. Iraqi insurgents, for example, fought not as armies but as open-source teams, independent yet interconnected. Each one learned from the others and adapted faster than any bureaucratic military chain of command could respond.

These networks are not just militant; they are entrepreneurial. They fund themselves through global crime — smuggling, hacking, or extortion — and invest in new tactics like start-ups in a marketplace of violence. Their advantage comes from autonomy, innovation, and speed. Against such foes, centralized militaries are like lumbering dinosaurs facing an evolutionary leap.

To you as a citizen or decision maker, this means that security can no longer be outsourced to the state. The next threats will not declare themselves, line up on a battlefield, or wait for diplomacy. The new wars will be fought in networks — and the winners will be those who understand, adapt, and participate at the network level themselves.

If you wanted to bring a nation to its knees without ever firing on its soldiers, what would you hit? For Robb, the answer is simple: its systems. In modern societies, power isn’t just political or military — it resides in the interconnected networks that deliver electricity, water, communications, and goods. Attacking these networks strategically can yield massive impact with minimal effort. This is the logic of systems disruption.

The Economics of Chaos

Robb illustrates this concept with striking data from Iraq: a $2,000 attack on an oil pipeline translated into $500 million in losses — a 25 million percent ROI. Multiply that across hundreds of attacks, and you get national paralysis. He also cites the Nigerian militants of the Niger Delta, whose raids on Shell Oil facilities routinely cut a million barrels per day from global supply, briefly pushing oil above $100 per barrel. In each case, small-scale, cheap sabotage created global economic tremors.

These attacks work because modern infrastructure is tightly coupled and heavily optimized — efficient but brittle. A single point of failure can ripple through an entire region, as seen in the 2003 Northeast blackout that left 50 million Americans without power. Robb contrasts this vulnerability with older, less efficient systems that were more redundant and survivable. Efficiency, he argues, is the enemy of resilience.

The Systempunkt

Borrowing from German military theory, Robb introduces the term systempunkt — the critical node in a network whose disruption cascades into systemic failure. Just as blitzkrieg commanders sought a “schwerpunkt,” or focal point, to break enemy lines, modern attackers seek systempunkts in energy grids, supply chains, or financial markets. The science of networks, he notes (drawing from Albert-László Barabási’s research in Linked), shows that scale-free systems are resilient to random failures but extremely vulnerable when key hubs are hit intentionally.

Guerrillas and hackers are learning this lesson quickly. Chechen rebels, Baloch militants, and Iraqi insurgents all exploited interdependence — striking oil or electricity to trigger political collapse. A single blackout can lead to halted pumping stations, food shortages, and cascading unrest. In a deeply connected world, the fallout is borderless.

Partial Collapse as Strategy

Robb observes that many groups intentionally stop short of total destruction. Instead of wiping out infrastructure completely, they keep it barely functional to preserve chaos without resolution. Disrupt too much, and the state launches total war; disrupt just enough, and it bleeds resources while losing legitimacy. This careful calibration mirrors T. E. Lawrence’s strategy against the Turks in World War I: control the rate of flow, not total supply, to paralyze the enemy without unifying him.

In the long run, cities — as the densest concentration of systems — are the ideal targets. Robb’s “urban takedown” scenario imagines a terrorism tax so high that major cities lose productivity and shrink. In such a world, power would shift from centralized states to resilient local networks that can self-sustain when larger systems fail.

For you, this idea reframes what security means. Protection isn’t about walls or weapons; it’s about redundancy, decentralization, and adaptability. If your life or business relies entirely on systems optimized for cost instead of resilience, Robb warns, you are already vulnerable to the next black swan disruption.

To understand modern conflict, Robb invites you to imagine two worlds: the cathedral and the bazaar. The cathedral is hierarchical, planned, and controlled — like a traditional army or corporation. The bazaar is decentralized, chaotic, and self-organizing — like the Internet or open-source software development. Modern warfare, he argues, has moved from the cathedral to the bazaar.

From Hierarchies to Networks

Traditional insurgencies (think Mao or the IRA) followed clear chains of command and ideology. They could be infiltrated or decapitated. But the insurgents of Iraq, Nigeria, and Chechnya operate like open-source projects. Their structure resembles Linus Torvalds’ Linux community more than Lenin’s party: anyone can contribute tactics, fund attacks, or launch operations as long as they advance the shared “plausible promise” — usually to drive out occupiers or weaken the state.

This decentralized architecture makes them incredibly resilient. Killing a leader like Zarqawi or bin Laden hardly matters; others emerge instantly. Robb points out that Al-Qaeda functions more like a franchising network — providing inspiration, training, and ideology to autonomous operators — than a bureaucratic command.

Hacking Warfare

Open-source warriors “hack” the code of conflict much as programmers hack software. They experiment with small-scale attacks, share results, and adapt quickly. Robb even adapts Eric Raymond’s famous rules from “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”: release early and often (attack frequently and learn fast); given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow (enough fighters will find what works); and simplicity wins (easy, repeatable tactics spread fastest). The innovation cycle of insurgency now mirrors software development sprints — iterative, cheap, and fast.

In Iraq, this produced a Darwinian process where only the most effective techniques — like roadside bombs or hostage markets — survived. Networks learned through stigmergy: each attack left “signals” broadcast by global media that others imitated or refined. Success bred imitation, and imitation bred evolution. (Researchers in military theory, like RAND’s John Arquilla, have described this as “netwar” — conflict conducted by loosely connected networks.)

The Bazaar’s Economy

The bazaar operates not just through ideology but through market forces. Funding flows from transnational crime, donations, and extortion. Bomb-makers, sappers, and smugglers sell services in an open market. In Iraq’s IED economy, skilled teams even advertised online, bidding for contracts based on prior success. Violence became entrepreneurial — self-sustaining, scalable, and profitable.

In practical terms, Robb’s model explains why our enemies keep getting smarter even after we “win” battles. Each failed state, each social media platform, becomes a new incubator for open-source violence. To defend against it, we must understand that innovation isn’t just technological — it’s organizational. The bazaar can’t be destroyed; it must be out-innovated.

Perhaps Robb’s most provocative claim is captured in his subtitle: the next stage of terrorism and the end of globalization. Globalization, he argues, is self-destructive. The same forces that knit the world together — trade, communication, open markets — create the conditions for its unraveling. As power and technology spread, nonstate actors emerge who exploit the interdependencies of this system, feeding instability that ultimately hollows it out.

The Long Tail of Warfare

Inspired by Chris Anderson’s “long tail” concept in media, Robb applies it to warfare. In Iraq and elsewhere, instead of a few large insurgent armies, hundreds of small factions exist — each with unique motives but overlapping goals. Their distribution follows a power law: a few large groups (like Al-Qaeda in Iraq) and a long tail of countless micro-groups — gangs, clans, and entrepreneurs of violence — that collectively sustain perpetual conflict. Like bloggers or YouTubers, these actors innovate from the bottom up, not top down.

This “bazaar of conflict” means there’s no longer a single war to win. Instead, we face an ecosystem of micro-wars that feed off globalization’s networks — smuggling routes, communications grids, and financial systems. When one node fails, another arises, ensuring continuous instability. The state can’t crush them all; it can only endure them.

Crime, Ideology, and Entrepreneurship

Modern guerrillas fund themselves through transnational crime rather than ideology. Moisés Naím’s Illicit and Robb’s own research reveal a $2–3 trillion black global economy — drugs, weapons, counterfeit goods, human trafficking — growing seven times faster than legitimate trade. This “parallel supply chain” links terrorists, smugglers, and corrupt officials worldwide. The result is a self-financing insurgency: global guerrillas as both entrepreneurs and revolutionaries.

The Taliban’s opium economy, Nigeria’s oil bunkering, and Latin America’s paramilitaries all demonstrate that future conflicts will be driven as much by profit as by politics. In this new feudalism, power flows through money and networks, not flags. When you can make millions by keeping a region unstable, peace is bad for business.

When Globalization Eats Itself

Global guerrillas turn efficiency against itself. Every time a terrorist hits a pipeline, a hacker shuts down a bank, or a cartel disrupts trade, prices rise and trust erodes. As costs mount, companies retreat into gated security systems; governments overreact with surveillance and militarization. The result, Robb warns, is a world of “armored suburbs” and privatized fortresses where the wealthy withdraw from the collective, leaving states brittle and unequal.

In other words, globalization ultimately fragments. Its infrastructure grows too efficient, too dependent, too optimized to survive its own complexity. The challenge for citizens, then, is to reinvent systems — local, resilient, and adaptive — that can weather global turbulence without collapsing entirely.

If nation-states can no longer protect everything, what comes next? Robb calls for a radical rethinking of security — away from centralization, control, and prevention, toward resilience, decentralization, and adaptation. The key isn’t to prevent all disruptions but to survive them gracefully.

Why Brittle Systems Fail

Today’s centralized systems — from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to financial markets — are designed for efficiency, not robustness. When stressed, they shatter. Robb dubs this “brittle security.” After 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, he argues, America responded by building stronger hierarchies instead of more distributed networks — creating more single points of failure.

He warns that both of the state’s favorite strategies are doomed. “Knee-jerk police states” erode freedom without making citizens safer; algorithmic surveillance produces false positives faster than actionable insights. Meanwhile, “preemptive war and nation-building,” like in Iraq, simply generate new failed states and fuel global guerrillas. Both approaches misunderstand the nature of an unpredictable world — one Robb, echoing Nassim Taleb, describes as governed by black swan events.

From Nation-State to Market-State

Drawing on constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt, Robb explains that nation-states — built to guarantee citizens’ welfare — are evolving into “market-states” whose legitimacy comes from maximizing opportunity. Whether entrepreneurial (like the U.S.), mercantile (like Japan), or managerial (like the EU), each must balance global integration with resilience. Market-states can’t command society from above; they must cultivate platforms that enable decentralized solutions from below.

Dynamic Decentralized Resilience

Robb’s answer is what he terms “dynamic decentralized resilience.” Like the Internet, society itself must be rebuilt as a platform — modular, open, and self-healing. Instead of a monolithic grid, imagine power networks where every home can generate, store, and share energy. Instead of centralized emergency agencies, envision networks of citizens, local governments, and private firms coordinating through open information systems. These aren’t utopian fantasies; experiments from Los Angeles’ Terrorism Early Warning Group to open-source disaster wikis after Hurricane Katrina show their promise.

Robb calls for turning critical infrastructure — energy, communication, transport — into open platforms that invite distributed innovation. Each platform, he argues, should foster an ecosystem of participants, from entrepreneurs to local governments, that compete to improve robustness. Drawing on business theorists Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien, he distinguishes “keystone” actors who strengthen an ecosystem (through open standards and shared benefits) from “dominators” and “landlords” who hoard control and make systems fragile. Building resilience means cultivating keystones — in both industry and governance.

Ultimately, this vision reframes you not as a passive consumer of security but as an active participant — a co-creator in the web of resilience. Survival in a networked world depends less on control and more on collaboration. The future belongs to cities, companies, and communities that treat security like open-source software: iterative, transparent, and alive.

In his final chapters, Robb looks beyond collapse toward renewal. He envisions a world rebuilt from the bottom up — one where resilience, sustainability, and open collaboration become the new pillars of security. The question shifts from “How can governments protect us?” to “How can we protect ourselves together?”

Ecosystems of Resilience

Robb borrows metaphors from biology and technology: thriving systems are ecosystems, not empires. They survive shocks because they are diverse, modular, and loosely coupled. To achieve this, he advocates turning every major infrastructure into a platform for participation. Homes should both consume and produce power; cities should crowdsource their own emergency management; citizens should join open-source intelligence and relief networks. These “living systems” evolve through interaction, feedback, and competition — not regulation alone.

From Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case

Robb critiques the obsession with just-in-time efficiency — global supply chains optimized for cost, not continuity. When disrupted, they collapse quickly, as the 2020–2022 global shocks proved presciently true. Instead, he urges a shift toward sustainability: local production of energy and essentials, renewable power integration, and modular technologies that can function independently if global links break. The same solar panels, Tesla-style batteries, and peer-to-peer networks celebrated for environmental reasons, Robb argues, are also weapons of survival.

The Decentralized Future

Robb’s forecast for 2016 and beyond — written almost prophetically — describes “armored suburbs,” private security networks, and hyperconnected communities filling the void left by failing states. While dystopian at first glance, he sees within this decentralization the seeds of a more participatory world. Citizens, corporations, and local networks will form overlapping webs of security, much like the layers of the Internet. In this model, you are both client and provider of safety, sharing responsibility the way you already share data online.

Robb’s concluding message is paradoxically optimistic: out of fragmentation arises evolution. The twenty-first century may belong not to governments but to adaptive, open systems — those that can learn, share, and recover. We will never eliminate disruption, he writes. But by mastering resilience — the art of failing safely — we can build a future stronger than the one we lost.

In the end, Brave New War isn’t just a theory of conflict; it’s a call to personal and civic renewal. The same decentralized intelligence that empowers global guerrillas can also empower global citizens. If we learn faster than those who would tear the world apart, we can turn their weapons of chaos into tools of creation.