David Ronfeldt

Bio

David F. Ronfeldt was a senior political scientist in the International Studies Group at RAND.

During his 30+ years at RAND, he worked initially on U.S.-Latin American security issues. Lately, he has worked mainly on ideas about information-age modes of conflict (e.g., cyberwar, netwar, swarming) and principles for cooperation (e.g., guarded openness, noopolitik). He is a co-author (mainly with John Arquilla) of In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the

Information Age (1997), The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico (1998), Countering the New Terrorism (1998), The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy (1999), Swarming and the Future of Conflict (2000), and Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (2001). He is now turning his attention to: (1) the development of a framework about the long-range evolution of societies, based on their capacity to use and combine four major forms of organization (tribes, hierarchies, markets, and networks); and (2) the development of a framework for analyzing people’s mindsets and cultural cosmologies in terms of basic beliefs about the nature of social space, social time, and social action. His educational background is as follows: B.A., International Relations, Pomona College, 1963; M.A., Latin American Studies, Stanford University, 1964; Ph.D., Political Science, Stanford University, 1971." (http://www.spoke.com/people/david-ronfeldt-3e1429c09e597c100373e05a)