The Terror Network Industrial Complex: A Measurement and Analysis of Terrorist Networks and War Stocks

James Usher, Pierpaolo Dondio

2018

Abstract

This paper presents a measurement study and analysis of the structure of multiple Islamic terrorist networks to determine if similar characteristics exist between those networks. We examine data gathered from four terrorist groups: Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) consisting of six terror networks. Our study contains 471 terrorists’ nodes and 2078 links. Each terror network is compared in terms efficiency, communication and composition of network metrics. The paper examines the effects these terrorist attacks had on US aerospace and defence stocks (herein War stocks). We found that the Islamic terror groups increase recruitment during the planned attacks, communication increases during and after the attacks between the subordinate terrorists and low density is a common feature of Islamic terrorist groups. The Al-Qaeda organisation structure was the most complex and superior in terms of secrecy, diameter, clustering, modularity and density. Jemaah Islamiyah followed a similar structure but not as superior. The ISIS and LeT organisational structures were more concerned with the efficiency of the operation rather than secrecy. We found that war stocks prices and the S+P 500 were lower the day after the attacks, however, the war stocks slightly outperformed the S+P 500 the day after the attacks. Further, we found that war stock prices were significantly lower one month after the terrorist attacks but the S+P 500 rebounded one month later.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Usher J. and Dondio P. (2018). The Terror Network Industrial Complex: A Measurement and Analysis of Terrorist Networks and War Stocks.In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-758-324-7, pages 172-181. DOI: 10.5220/0006926901720181

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist18,
author={James Usher and Pierpaolo Dondio},
title={The Terror Network Industrial Complex: A Measurement and Analysis of Terrorist Networks and War Stocks},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2018},
pages={172-181},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006926901720181},
isbn={978-989-758-324-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - The Terror Network Industrial Complex: A Measurement and Analysis of Terrorist Networks and War Stocks
SN - 978-989-758-324-7
AU - Usher J.
AU - Dondio P.
PY - 2018
SP - 172
EP - 181
DO - 10.5220/0006926901720181