Information Warfare and Organizational Decision-Making

294 Pages·2006·3.312 MB·English

by  Alexander Kott

Information Warfare and
Organizational Decision-Making
For a listing of recent titles in the Artech House
Information Warfare Series, turn to the back of this book.
Information Warfare and
Organizational Decision-Making
Alexander Kott
Editor
artechhouse.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the U.S. Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: 1-59693-079-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-59693-079-7
Cover design by Yekaterina Ratner
© 2007 ARTECH HOUSE, INC.
685 Canton Street
Norwood, MA 02062
Allrightsreserved.PrintedandboundintheUnitedStatesofAmerica.Nopartofthisbook
maybereproducedorutilizedinanyformorbyanymeans,electronicormechanical,includ-
ing photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Alltermsmentionedinthisbookthatareknowntobetrademarksorservicemarkshave
beenappropriatelycapitalized.ArtechHousecannotattesttotheaccuracyofthisinforma-
tion.Useofaterminthisbookshouldnotberegardedasaffectingthevalidityofanytrade-
mark or service mark.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction ix
CHAPTER 1
Know Thy Enemy: Acquisition, Representation, and Management of
Knowledge About Adversary Organizations 1
Introduction to Organization Warfare 2
Organizational Intelligence 6
Leadership Analysis 12
Social Network Modeling and Analysis 14
Representative Analytic Process and Tools 19
Application Considerations 23
Endnotes 25
CHAPTER 2
Learning from the Enemy: Approaches to Identifying and Modeling
the Hidden Enemy Organization 29
An Elusive Enemy 29
Domain of Organization Identification 31
Adversary Identification Research 33
Identification Focus: Definition of Command and Control Organization 36
From Structure to Strategy: Characterizing Behavior of a C2 Organization 38
Looking Beyond the Smoke Screen: Definition of Observations 42
Discovering the Dots: Finding Identities of Actors 45
Connecting the Dots: Discovering Patterns of Interactions and Activities 48
Behavior Learning and Simulating Enemy Activities 53
The Overall Process of Identifying Enemy Command and Control 55
Experimental Validation of the Organization Identification Process 57
References 59
CHAPTER 3
Who’s Calling? Deriving Organization Structure from
Communication Records 63
The Tasks 64
CCR Structures and Their Graphical Representation 64
The Ali Baba Scenarios 66
Social Network Analysis 67
Previous Work Exploiting Time in Social Networks 71
The Windowing Down the Lines (WDL): The Algorithm 73
The Scenario 74
v
vi Contents
The Data 74
Formatting the Data 74
Time Windowing 75
Time Overlapping 77
The Algorithm 79
Simple Simulation Tests 81
Evaluation of WDL with the Ali Baba Datasets 82
Without Topics 82
With Topics 84
The RSF Algorithm 86
References 88
CHAPTER 4
Means and Ways: Practical Approaches to Impact Adversary
Decision-Making Processes 89
Planning Operations for Organization Impact 90
Targeting Decision-Making 93
Targeting the Entire Organization 94
Effects-Based Targeting 95
Inducing Effects for Defeat 100
Denial or Destruction 101
Disruption 103
Deception 104
Direction and Reflexion 105
Targeting for Effects 107
Vulnerability Assessment 108
Plan Development 108
Strategic Analysis 109
Organization Behavior Analysis 109
Application Considerations 110
Endnotes 111
CHAPTER 5
Breakdown of Control: Common Malfunctions of Organizational
Decision-Making 115
Tardy Decision 117
Low and High Threshold 120
Excess of Timidity or Aggressiveness 121
Self-Reinforcing Error 122
Overload 124
Cascading Collapse 125
Misallocation of Authority 127
Lack of Synchronization and Coordination 128
Deadlock 131
Thrashing and Livelock 132
Acknowledgments 133
References 134
Contents vii
CHAPTER 6
Propagation of Defeat: Inducing and Mitigating a Self-Reinforcing
Degradation 135
A Simple Model for Self-Reinforcing Decision Overload 136
Propagation of Disruptions in Organizations 141
Active Compensation 144
Dynamic Reorganization to Mitigate Malfunctions 146
Modeling Team Decision-Making: Decision Responsibility and
Information Structure 147
Measuring Decision-Making Performance 150
Forecasting Decision Requirements 151
A Simulation of the Firefighting Example 151
Mitigating and Inducing Malfunctions 153
Acknowledgments 156
References 156
CHAPTER 7
Gossip Matters: Destabilization of an Organization by Injecting Suspicion 159
Is Gossip Good or Bad? 160
What Is Gossip? 162
Anonymous Information Exchange Networks 163
Hypothetical Organization, Part I: It’s All Bits 164
Hypothetical Organization, Part II: Miscreant Markets 165
TAG Model Overview 167
The Mechanisms of Trust 169
Trust Model 169
Honesty Models 171
Gossip Model 171
Gossip and Disruption 172
Setting the Baselines 172
A Virtual Experiment in Disruption 173
Results of TAG Experiments 174
Interpretation 175
Giving and Taking 177
Acknowledgments 181
Endnotes 181
CHAPTER 8
Crystal Ball: Quantitatively Estimating Impacts of Probes and Interventions
on an Enemy Organization 191
Organizational Analysis Approach 192
Organization’s Options for Dealing with Mission Complexity 192
Enemy Organization Dynamics and Counteraction Strategies 193
Actionable Implications 194
Main Methods 195
Developing Strategies Against Enemy Organizations 195
Probe Identification 196
viii Contents
Intervention Planning 196
Test-Case Scenario: A Human-Guided Torpedo Attack on
a U.S. Military Vessel in a Foreign Port 197
Enemy Organization Model 199
Enemy Mission Complexity Characteristics 200
Estimating Impacts of an Example Probe 203
Estimating Impacts of Example Interventions 205
Analytical and Numerical Methods Underlying VDT and
Related Approaches 207
Organization Modeling and Strategy Development with SimVision 208
Implications for Detecting and Defeating Enemy Organizations 211
References 211
CHAPTER 9
Organizational Armor: Design of Attack-Resistant Organizations 213
How Organizations Cope with Disruptions 214
Attack-Resistant Design Solutions 218
Organizational Design Formalism 221
Precursors for Superior Organizational Performance 222
A Computational Approach for Predicting Organizational Performance 225
Normative Design of Robust and Adaptive Organizations 228
Empirical Validation of Normative Design Methodology 230
Reverse-Engineering Organizational Vulnerabilities 233
Robust and Adaptive Designs of Attack-Resistant Organizations 236
Illustrative Example—Redesigning an Organization to Enhance
Attack Resistance 242
Example Scenario 242
Enemy Attacks 245
Redesign Principles 246
Attack-Specific Courses of Action 247
Engineering for Congruence with Mission in the Face of Attacks 248
Adaptation 250
Analyze Organizational Design 251
References 252
About the Authors 257
Index 265
Introduction
Organizations are among the most valuable and yet most fragile structures of our
civilization. We rely on organizations to obtain information, to comprehend and
processinformation,toaccumulateandinternalizeinformation,tomakedecisions
basedinpartonthatinformation,andtoexecutethosedecisions.Organizationsare
ubiquitous because they are indispensable. From the most primitive to the most
complexsocieties,organizationsofvarioustypeshaveconstitutedthebackboneof
societal decision-making.
This book explores recent developments in computational solutions to prob-
lemsofexploitingormitigatingvulnerabilitieswithinorganizationaldecision-mak-
ing processes. It describes a range of computational techniques that can help to
guide attacks on an adversary’s organization or the defense of one’s own.
Fromanengineeringperspective,theapplicationsofthetechniquesdescribedin
this book cover a broad range of practical problems. They include planning and
commandofmilitaryoperationsagainstanenemycommandorganization,military
andforeignintelligence,antiterrorismanddomesticsecurity,informationsecurity,
organizationaldesign,militarypsychologyandtraining,managementpractice,and
organizational computing. In particular, one discipline—information warfare
[1]—traditionallypaidspecialattentiontoissuesrelatedtoattackinganddefending
military command organizations.
Computationalapproachesapplicabletosuchproblemsoriginateinseveralsci-
entificdisciplines:computationalorganizationtheory,organizationalandmanage-
mentsciences,artificialintelligenceplanning,cognitivemodeling,andgametheory.
A key objective of this work is to demonstrate important close relations between
ideas coming from such diverse areas.
Thereareseveralreasonswhytheauthorsbelieveabookonthistopicispartic-
ularlytimelynow.Earlier,inthe1990s,researcherswereattractedtorelatedtopics
inthecontextofinformationwarfare,particularlyinthesubfieldofcommandand
controlwarfare[2],andintechniquesforsimulatingcommandandcontrolorgani-
zationsforsimulation-basedwargaming[3].Morerecently,thebreadthanddepth
of related research have extended dramatically. The number of publications and
conferencesrelatedtoorganizationalmodelingandanalysishasgrownbyanorder
ofmagnitudeinthelastfewyears.Thisphenomenalgrowthwaslargelyduetothe
aftermathoftheSeptember11,2001,terroristattack[4]andtheresultingattention
to(1)ways tounderstandandinfluenceterroristandinsurgentorganizations, and
(2) concerns about the vulnerability of domestic organizations.
Additional interest in these issues is spurred by massive (and expensive)
transformationalprocessesintheU.S.military.Itisaccompaniedbytherethinking
of approaches to organizing the command structures and processes in the age of
information dominance and massive pervasive networking [5]. It is also accompa-
ix