The terrorist network operates as a swarming sytem: its action is initiated through the convergence or focusing of a distributed network onto a single point in space and time, spontaneously, unexpectedly marshaling relatively sparse resources to produce an act of resonating terror-disruption-shock. This is emblematic of the super-structural reality of the Empire, as conceived by Hardt and Negri:
Perhaps the more capital extends its global network of production and control, the more powerful any singular point of revolt can be, simply by focusing their own power, concentrating their energies in a tense and compact coil, these serpentine struggles striking directly at the highest articulations of imperial order. Empire presents a superficial world, the virtual centre of which can be access immediately from any point across the surface. If these points were to constitute something like the new cycle of struggles it would be a cycle defined not by the communicative extension of the struggles but rather by their singular emergence, by the intensity that characterizes them one by one. In short, this new phase is defined by the fact that these struggles do not link horizontally but each leap vertically, directly to the virtual centre of the Empire.1
The first reaction to the swarm-based terrorist acts (9/11, etc.) was the reification of extreme certainty within the context of absolute uncertainty. President George W. Bush: "This is a world that is much more uncertain than in the past...even though it's an uncertain world, we're certain of some things...We're certain there are madmen in this world, and there's terror, and there's missiles and I'm certain of this too."2 The intent here is to crystallize the uncertainty of the enemy (who's location, capabilities and intentions remain unknown), and the fear which this uncertainty inevitably generates, into the rhetoric of certainty as a strategy to mobilize an overwhelming response. As is to be expected, this response was and continues to be inherently misdirected, overly blunt and ultimately ineffective (Bin Laden remains at large, there were no weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq).
Recently, a more nuanced approach has emerged, operating within the territory and strategy of the terrorist. Counter-terrorism agencies are beginning to deploy non-hierarchical approaches, learning as it were from the enemy:
In New York City, as many as 100 police officers in squad cars from every precinct converge twice daily at randomly selected times and at randomly selected sites, like Times Square or the financial district, to rehearse their response to a terrorist attack. City police officials say the operations are believed to be a crucial tactic to keep extremists guessing as to when and where a large police force presence may materialize at any hour.3
Thus the swarm has emerged as a primary tactic for deterrence in the post-9/11 condition and in the war against terrorism. Through the convergence of multi-layered security networks (both physical and virtual) at different points and at different times (randomly, or in response to some non-determinant calculus), it becomes possible to disrupt the territory in which the terrorists operate. The fundamental assumption is that the terrorist network (or any covert movement) inherently lacks the resources (both materially/financially and in terms of their social-cultural legitimacy) to accommodate repeated failure. Swarm deployment on the part of a legitimate4 institutional structure increases the likelihood – or perhaps more critically, the perception of the likelihood – that a terrorist act will be countered by an overlapping convergence of emergency personnel, en-force. It attempts to shift the odds, forcing the terrorists to either gamble at a game they cannot afford to lose, or desist and thus concede their only real avenue for meaningful action.
This emerging dynamic – swarm / counter-swarm (SwCsw) – can be seen in everything from celebrity media-propaganda to methodologies for environmental activism and regimes for controlling systemic diseases (immunodeficiency syndromes, metastasized cancer, etc.), from battlefield operations to tactics playing out on the football pitch – which is to say it is not simply the product of policies of re-militarization in the face of terrorist threat. We argue here that it is in fact endemic to the conditions of the globalized Empire, that this is a central, defining power structure/relationship, with the capacity, as machinic-phylum, to instigate new stratum of institutionalization, regimentation and other material and cultural formations. And most importantly, that this dynamic can be employed not just in relation to perceived threats, but as an (architectural) strategy within the context of the city, as a source for the imagining and enactment of new modes of participatory engagement with the city.
1Hardt and Negri, “Marx's Mole is Dead!”
2as quoted from Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real,
3Eric Schmitt and Thom Hanker, “U.S. Adapts Cold-War Idea to Fight Terrorism”, New York Times, March 18, 2008
4A problematic definition in itself, subject to redefinition at least in part by the terms under discussion in this text
