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Global Terrorism Appears Scale Invariant

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We find little reason to believe that the appearance of power laws in the distribution of the severity of an event is the result of either reporting bias or changes in database management. This suggests that the power law distribution, with alpha ? 2, is an inherent feature of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Indeed, the severity distribution itself has changed very little over the past 37 years of recorded events, in spite of a dramatic increase in the frequency of events. This small growth in the breadth of the severity distri- bution may be the result of technological changes, such as the power and availability of cheap explosives and firearms.

Terrorist attacks over the last decades follow a power-law distribution, which anticipates future terrorist events with ever broader effects. Intelligence estimates based on models keyed to frequency and recency of past occurrences make us less secure even if they predict most terrorist events. Evolution, complex adaptive systems, and WWII experience from British intelligence provide salutary lessons for thinking outside the box with decentralized expertise. History shows that people do not readily panic in surprise attacks and that local actors may be best able to organize response efforts. Proposals to centralize intelligence and unify command and control are not promising given recent transformations in terrorist networks in the wake of Al-Qaedas operational demise.

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