The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

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robustness that centralized modes of organization lack. In fact, the
analyses of Hardt and Negri, as well as Virno, seem to imply the identity
between the formal and ideological planes of the multitude, an
isomorphism between the topological and political levels.
Contemporary analyses of “multitude” (such as those of Hardt and
Negri, and Virno) share significant affinities with Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s
analysis of “netwar.” In this intersection, political allegiances of Left and
Right tend to blur into a strange, shared concern over the ability to control,
produce, and regulate networks.
For Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “netwar refers to an emerging mode of
conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military
warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization
and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information
age.” 5 While they write from a perspective far to the right
of Hardt and Negri or Virno, Arquilla and Ronfeldt do acknowledge
that netwar has two sides to it: “We had in mind actors as diverse as
transnational terrorists, criminals, and even radical activists.” 6 While
they, like Hardt and Negri, discuss the 1999 anti - WTO demonstrations
in Seattle, they also discuss international terrorist networks,
the Zapatista movement, and pro - democracy uses of the Internet in
Singapore, Vietnam, and Burma. Thus “netwar can be waged by ‘good’
as well as ‘bad’ actors, and through peaceful as well as violent measures.”
7 For Arquilla and Ronfeldt, the diversity of types of netwar, as
well as their complexity (they outline five distinct levels at which
netwar operates: technological, doctrinal, ideological, narratological,
and social), makes them a unique emerging form of political action,
with all the unknowns that such forms imply. For them, “netwar is an
ambivalent mode of conflict.” 8 And as we discussed at the outset,
the radicality of Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s analyses is to suggest that “it
takes networks to fight networks”—that network modes of action
require network - based responses (a suggestion that, to be sure, works
against many of the U.S. military’s legacy centrist hierarchies).
Despite their political differences, both the concept of the multitude and
the concept of netwars share a common methodological approach: that “the