Bouncing Back: Recovery Mechanisms of Covert Networks

In study of covert networks and destabilization strategies thereof, much attention has been paid to the task of locating and isolating key individuals within the organization. Metrics such as centrality, betweenness, cognitive load, and others, have all been used for that purpose. The isolation act was considered successful if it resulted in the network being separated into disconnected subparts. However, the real-world covert networks that have been a target of various isolation strategies have shown a high level of resilience, and were able to quickly recover from the damage caused by the isolation. In this paper, we show that cellular covert networks use transactive memory and other latent resources as a mechanism for recovery from events that partition the network. Using a multi-agent network simulation, we proceed to show the recovery process and its effects on performance of the cellular network.