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

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