convergence

Introduction
Michael Miklaucic and Jacqueline Brewer
In the last 20 years, globalization has outpaced the growth of mechanisms for global
governance. This has resulted in a lack of regulation—whether it be on the Internet, in banking
systems, or free trade zones. The same conditions that have led to unprecedented openness in
trade, travel, and communication have created massive opportunities for criminals. As a result,
organized crime has diversified, gone global, and reached macro-economic proportions.
—Walter Kemp, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to Security
In some situations these new networks could act as forces for good by pressuring
governments through non-violent means to address injustice, poverty, the impacts of
climate change, and other social issues. Other groups, however, could use networks and
global communications to recruit and train new members, proliferate radical ideologies,
manage their finances, manipulate public opinion, and coordinate attacks.
—National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025
A cceleration. Magnification. Diffusion. Entropy. Empowerment. The global environment
and the international system are evolving at hypervelocity. A consensus is emerging
among policymakers, scholars, and practitioners that recent sweeping developments in information
technology, communication, transportation, demographics, and conflict are making
global governance more challenging. Some argue these developments have transformed our
international system, making it more vulnerable than ever to the predations of terrorists and
criminals. Others argue that despite this significant evolution, organized crime, transnational
terrorism, and nonstate networks have been endemic if unpleasant features of human society
throughout history, that they represent nothing new, and that our traditional means of countering
them—primarily conventional law enforcement—are adequate. Even among those
who perceive substantial differences in the contemporary manifestations of these persistent
maladies, they are viewed as major nuisances not adding up to a significant national or international
security threat, much less an existential threat.
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