Understanding Illicit Networks

We all know that, in recent decades, businesses have internationalized their operations like never before, but a less well-known result of globalization is that transnational criminal enterprises have also benefited enormously. Sophisticated illicit networks have emerged around the world, adept at exploiting the disjunction between global economic integration and the persistence of sovereign states. Global commerce now relies on countless shipping containers, which are rarely checked for contraband. The liberalization of capital movements and the ubiquity of information technology enables money laundering at the push of a button. Law enforcement authorities, trapped within national borders and independent jurisdictions, are running in place as illicit actors hopscotch across sovereign frontiers and exploit asymmetries in the policing of trade in narcotics, humans, weapons, and other illicit commodities.

To better understand how information technology both facilitates transnational crime and might also be harnessed to combat it, Google Ideas and CFR have launched a new roundtable series on Illicit Networks. The first joint workshop, on March 21 (“Illicit Actors: Mapping Networks, Assessing Tactics”), convened twenty prominent experts to discuss the evolving landscape of transnational crime. The wide-ranging discussion (summarized more fully here) produced several important insights.