POLI 364 Chapter : State and Terrorist Conspiracies

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 364
• Professor: William Clare Roberts

Document Summary

Therefore, not every conspirator trusts or knows every other conspirator even if they are all connected. To kill a conspiracy, all one has to do is kill the links between conspirators. What is the minimum number of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal number? (divide and conquer. ) This depends on the structure of the conspiracy. Some links only contain the flow of trivial information, while others have info that is vital. Therefore, links must be categorized according to importance ( weight in the twine analogy. ) As a nexus of information, with inputs and outputs, they are able to compute more efficiently than the same group of individuals acting alone. Because conspiracies are cognitive devices that act on the information that they procure, bad information inputs will result in distorted actions taken by the conspiracy (garbage in, garbage out. ) Most of the time, it is the conspiracy that inflicts distortion.