target and random attacks in dark networks: what's new? [closed] - igraph

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Dear dark network analysts, covert network lovers, sociologists with interests in secret societies, and practitioners of network analysis in police and in journalism,
This week, I am modeling nodal attacks on a well-known Italian mafia network in the United States, I received as a gift from a research team which managed to publish recently with Social Networks. Typically, in a node attacks paper, network scientists sequentially remove some element from the network and monitor a number of graph connectivity measures (e.g., Albert, Jeong & Barabási 2000). We have seen from the network literature the following attack strategies on covert networks:
target attacks, or attacks on most central actors (e.g., Xu and Chen 2008)
random attacks (e.g., Xu and Chen 2008)
bridge and broker attacks (e.g., Xu and Chen 2008)
hubs removal
What other original structural attacks on criminal networks could you think of? I am particularly interested in implementing node removal strategies which are being used in the police.
What innovations in nodal attacks could I immediately propose? We could attempt to remove entire micro structures from the dark network in some order and see what happens with its connectivity. Federico Varese and Diego Gambetta wrote extensively on the importance of the triad in criminal organizations (e.g., Gambetta 2000; Varese 2000) and the triad as a business (e.g., Chu 2000). Mark Lauchs wrote two papers on blowing the whistle in chains of corrupt transactions and how these chains sequentially fail (e.g., Lauchs et al. 2011, 2012). Mark Granovetter briefly sketched a few sociological remarks on market corruption and network corruption (Granovetter 2004). I guess his network argument could be applied to the removal of entire k-cores, n-clubs or n-cliques of corruption monopolies or oligopolies in the network market of organized crime.
triads
chains and certain paths
cliques
small ego networks
partial branches and hierarchies
k-cores
n-clubs
Furthermore, I have also been interested in monitoring murder in covert networks applying dreadful historically documented techniques of personnel removal utilized in mafias, gangs, terrorist networks, crime rings, and military organizations, such as:
astrological murder
alphabetical murder
black lists
kinship bloodshed violence, e.g., taxing with first sons in family
extinction of entire bloodlines, e.g., the witches in The Vampire Diaries with Nina Dobrev
eradication of entire crime families
Clearly these aren’t structural attacks, yet some of their motivations may hide network motives. Is there a movie called, The network murder? Regrettably, I only know Andrew Papachristos’ “Murder by structure,” (2009) a paper which was originally coined to me by the American sociologist Peter Bearman. Obviously, an original source for modeling network attacks could be chapter “Death” from Federico Varese’s Mafia Life (2018). The books features a number of original feuds and interclan wars in the mafia, which aren't necessarily network-based, yet they are tremendously smart economic-wise.
For the lazy math geeks out there who don't have time to read many books or review the voluminous Italian literature on the topic, I recommend going to the Italian mafia movies during the weekends.
References
Albert, R., Jeong, H., & Barabási, A. L. (2000). Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature, 406(6794), 378-382.
Chu, Y. K. (2002). The triads as business. Routledge.
Gambetta, D. (2002). “Corruption: An analytical map.”
Granovetter, M. (2004). “The Social Construction of Corruption.” Department of Sociology.
Lauchs, M., Keast, R., & Chamberlain, D. (2012). Resilience of a corrupt police network: the first and second jokes in Queensland. Crime, law and social change, 57, 195-207.
Lauchs, M., Keast, R., & Yousefpour, N. (2011). Corrupt police networks: uncovering hidden relationship patterns, functions and roles. Policing & society, 21(1), 110-127.
Papachristos, A. V. (2009). Murder by structure: Dominance relations and the social structure of gang homicide. American journal of sociology, 115(1), 74-128.
Varese, F. (2000). “Pervasive corruption.” Economic crime in Russia, 99-111.
Varese, F. (2018). Mafia life: Love, death, and money at the heart of organized crime. Oxford University Press.
Xu, J., & Chen, H. (2008). The topology of dark networks. Communications of the ACM, 51(10), 58-65.
(google scholar, ameliorate the referencing whenever possible)
Currently, I am experimenting with removing entire crime families, blood lines and smaller network structures. This is also a brilliant way to improve the brainwaver package in R, which at present is somewhat limited (for my needs at least).