The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World

criminal activities continues to blur, the transactional connections between a wide-range of
unlawful organizations is also likely to blur the distinction between law enforcement and military
operations. The Joint Force may find it more difficult to distinguish between allies and adversaries,
and determine who really matters, who to engage, and who to support.
The Rise of Privatized Violence
States will find it increasingly difficult to maintain a monopoly on the use of force. Private and
non-state groups, in the absence of strong or legitimate states, will increasingly turn to violence to
advance their political, social, ideological, or economic goals. Sub-state and transnational actors
will be enabled by the ability to rapidly share information through mobile devices and associated
social media platforms. Collective action and popular movements, which once took once took
months or years to build, will be catalyzed in hours. Small determined groups or even lone
radicalized individuals will continue to wield enormous influence using “off grid” mesh networks
to disrupt the political and social order of a nation.
The rise of privatized violence is likely to result from several important trends:
Adaptive irregular/sub-state adversaries. Adversaries will continue developing capabilities
to avoid or withstand U.S. technological overmatch. Many criminal and terrorist groups are
likely to combine relatively cheap, accessible, and potentially disruptive technologies – such
as social media, smartphones, 3D printing, robotic and autonomous systems – to degrade or
even defeat U.S. systems in the future.
Disruptive manufacturing technologies and the urban arsenal. The proliferation of
technology and a wide range of manufacturing capabilities in many urban areas will likely
continue over the next two decades and might lead to novel advances, to include pervasive
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance instruments and relatively cheap and simple,
yet effective strike assets such as 3D printed drones or sophisticated IEDs.
Weaponization of commercial technologies. Over the next two decades, a greater number of
people will become connected and begin to take advantage of mobile technologies. Driven
largely by expected advances in computerization, miniaturization and digitization, potential
adversaries will likely have greater access to more sophisticated weaponry that does not
require sophisticated users to effectively employ.
Transnational criminal organizations, terrorist groups, and other irregular threats are likely to
exploit the rapid spread of advanced technologies to design, resource, and execute complex attacks
and combine many complex attacks into larger, more sustained campaigns. Potential adversaries
might leverage commercially available cell phone and networking capabilities to issue real-time
propaganda through social media that portrays the Joint Force in a negative manner and highlights
actual or perceived injustices. Or, the Joint Force might be confronted by a more lethal battlefield
as potential adversaries use basic but effective strike assets to impose significant costs on units
conducting urban combat operations. However, in the future the Joint Force could leverage
technology to disrupt, deny, and defeat these systems, using many of the same asymmetric
techniques that adversaries currently employ against the United States.
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