What is it about?
Government agents posing as terrorist affiliates (for example, people who trade in weapons) introduce quality uncertainty into terrorist transactions. The uncertainty increases the risks that terrorists face and increases their expected returns. This reduces the returns that can be earned by genuine and high quality terrorist affiliates and prompts their withdrawal from the terrorism context. The withdrawal of the highest quality affiliates prompts another increase in risk and expected returns. Within a particular network, the spiral may continue until the network is destroyed. Of course, because it is always uncertain whether an affiliate is a government agent, this outcome may ensue even when there is no actual government presence.
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Why is it important?
The use of 'undercover' agents is an important part of the counter-terrorism and law enforcement toolkit. That its application in one context or at one time may destroy networks in other contexts or at other times is an important conclusion.
Perspectives
This paper addresses an important problem. In one sense, the paper highlights the importance of Akerlof's lemons conclusion for terrorism studies. However, I think that the way in which this conclusion is re-cast and the way in which expected return and risk are used analytically is innovative. The application of this line of reasoning to the context of terrorist networks and 'undercover' agents as 'injectors' of quality uncertainty is equally innovative.
Dr Peter J Phillips
University of Southern Queensland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Terrorist Network Infiltration, Asymmetric Information, and Quality Uncertainty, Journal of Applied Security Research, July 2011, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/19361610.2011.580263.
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