Covert Organizations' Asymmetric Arms Race: Comparative Case Study Toward Multi-Method Research

Modern terrorists may be skilled at high technology, but they still use old-fashioned, low-tech methods of overcoming higher-tech defenses. Technologies and ideologies change, yet such covert threats remain. From stone to cyber age, forces unable or unwilling to meet technological superiority in battle seek out simpler hard-to-detect means of subverting their advanced foes. Countering this technologically asymmetric threat requires a better understanding of the human networks that employ terror. How do they operate, hide and evolve? How can they be detected and defeated? Research shows how analyzing organizational technology use choices for communications can shed light on the stable principles behind covert networks which have withstood the tests of time and change. Results elucidate the underlying puzzle of when and why is it that some organizations choose lower, whereas others adopt higher, technological sophistication in this asymmetric arms race. The paper is a building block of a larger study exploring this puzzle. The study theorizes that useful information about a covert organization can be learned by analyzing the known means by which its members communicate, rather than the content of their communication (which may be disguised or misleading). The investigation combines two complementary approaches to explore both the general across-organizations patterns and the specific processes inside theoretically selected organizations that inform how and why these patterns emerge. An information theoretic quantitative analysis explores the patterns and provides insights and dimensions for case comparison. An organization-theoretic case study uses these dimensions and the structured, focused comparison method to establish a theoretical framework for case selection and systematic analysis. This framework is then used to compare two specific theoretically-selected cases: al Qaeda’s 1998 bombing plot and KGB’s 1954 assassination plot presented in this paper. In each case, the main perpetrator lived to tell, despite organizational security designs. The comparable data for each case combine internal participant records with external observations from contemporary and modern sources. The analysis traces the logic of action, organizational structure, and technology choices as each operation unfolded. Results are expected to provide new cumulative insights into organizations generally, and terrorist groups in particular.