Michael Kenney has written a provocative analysis of narcotics and terrorists, and of the enforcers who seek to destroy them. It is a narrative of the dark side of globalization that takes its shape from a tightly connected global system that simultaneously opens up local spaces for resistance and subversion. Through the lens of organizational theory, Kenney tells two relate but distinct stories.

The first is familiar. It is about networks and the advantages they bring—flexibility, speed, and resilience—when they compete with states. Kenney takes us through the organizational structure of drug cartels in Colombia and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, before it was disrupted. He looks at transnational wheel networks that use core groups to steer far-flung operations, at decentralized chain networks that rely on ad hoc coordination among largely independent nodes, and at cross-mutations that mix and match features. The organizational stories are illuminating. Far from being a flat structure, for example, Al Qaeda looked more like a transnational wheel structure, with authorization coming from the top. Certainly, it was less hierarchical than a state, but a hierarchical network it was.

Network analysis goes beyond a thick description of organizational structures. As a set of theoretical propositions, it tells us something about the nodes that are more central and those that are less so, the advantages of “weak” ties and the weaknesses of “strong” ties. Kenney does not exploit the theoretical propositions of network analysis to examine the dynamics—as opposed to the statics—of the drug cartels or Al Qaeda. He tells us nothing, for example, about whether these networks are likely to scale, a central preoccupation of network analysis. Scalability is also the central public policy problem here. Policymakers want a diagnostic that helps them understand which networks are likely to grow and why they are more likely than their competitors to capture market share. Curiously, we get the apparatus of networks but without the theoretical punch to advance the understanding of the drug networks and Al Qaeda.

Kenney comes at the dynamics from a different perspective. Using organizational theory, he explores complex adaptation within interactive systems to examine how the narcs and the narcos—the Columbian drug cartels and U.S. and Columbian drug enforcement organizations— and terror network and counterterrorism organizations—Al Qaeda and the Department of Homeland Security—learn. He tells a complex story about learning that takes unexpected twists and turns. He shows how drug cartels and terrorist organizations learn and adapt to the strategies that counternarcotics and counterterrorism agencies use.

The virtue of the book is in the richly detailed study concerning how the cartels and Al Qaeda have learned. Kenney takes us through the detailed technical manuals on bomb-making, the information stored on hard drives, and the formal learning models that Al Qaeda used in its training camps in Afghanistan. He also tells a compelling story of “learning-by-doing,” of the creation of communities of practice where apprentices gradually perform their skills under the tutelage of the more experienced. This is by no means a story of superior learning; on the contrary, learning is plagued by all of the usual challenges of coordination, miscommunication, and personal and institutional rivalries. But it is faster and more efficient because of the shorter hierarchies and what we might call dedication to task.

The enforcers also study, learn, and adapt. But, Kenney argues, they are hampered by organizational structures, by classification procedures, by exercises that draw inappropriate lessons from artificial experiences, and by coercive interrogation techniques that extract false information. This deficit in learning then shapes the narratives and the strategies of decapitation and interdiction of leaders. It is no wonder, he concludes, that the first advantage goes to the dark networks, rather than to the enforcers.

Learning cannot, however, carry the full weight of the argument that Kenney makes. In this story, both the networkers and the enforcers learn and they adapt to a changing environment, sometimes more effectively and at other times less so. Another story, one that the author does not quite recognize, is embedded within the larger story of learning. Networks have an informational advantage, he argues, while states have the advantage of force. Once states identify their targets, networks face great difficulty in overcoming the advantage that states enjoy in their capacity to disrupt. This is not so much a story of mutual learning, then, as it is of adaptation through the relative advantages of information for networks and force for states. Network leaders who survive are those who remain hidden, unidentified, and therefore less exposed.

Kenney hints at one more story that is separate from both networks and learning. He briefly tells a story of system effects and of mutual dependence among the dark networks of globalization and the state enforcers. Each needs the other and survives within the spaces created by the other. The dark networks grow up and thrive in the spaces that globalization creates and in the connections it enables. The offices of counternarcotics and counterterrorism depend on ongoing threats to justify their missions and their budgets. There is here a mutually reinforcing spiral that works to the advantage of both. Even when enforcers decapitate a network and kill its leaders or drive them into hiding, they create a window of opportunity for smaller, lower-profile enterprises to emerge from the shadows. When the cartels were decapitated, smaller businesses and networks filled the space. Similarly, after 2001, Al Qaeda decentralized its operations and forged ties with local militants. Today, Al Qaeda is no longer a transnational wheel network but, rather, a brand name and a series of self-organizing, self-adjusting, loosely connected chain networks.

These system effects are not as one-sided as the asymmetries would suggest. Paradoxically, what may help is less, not more, attention to these kinds of networks so that the self-reinforcing spiral slows and creates less attractive benefits for both.