Complexity Science in the Underworld

It sounds contradictory: the police roll up gang after gang, arrest ringleaders, and intercept record amounts of drugs. Yet, the street price of cocaine remains stable, and the supply remains undiminished.

How can that be?

In this interview, I dive into the world of Complexity Science. We don’t look at criminals as isolated individuals, but as parts of an adaptive system. Just like a flock of starlings continuously adapting to its environment, criminal networks prove to have unexpected resilience.

Listen to the interview

Highlights from the conversation

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Order in Chaos

What does a complexity scientist actually do? It’s not about the individual parts, but about the interactions. How patterns emerge from chaos, whether it’s traffic jams, stock market crashes, or drug trafficking.

2. The Intervention Paradox

The direct prompt for this research was a persistent question from the police. Why do heavy-handed interventions fail to create scarcity (and thus higher prices) in the market? The answer lies in the adaptive capacity of the organization.

3. The Hydra Effect

Our computer models reveal a fascinating but worrying phenomenon. When you remove a key node from a network, the trade doesn’t stop. On the contrary, the system adapts:

• The remaining members rapidly establish new connections.
• The network often becomes tighter and denser to fill the gap.
• Inefficiency is solved simply by deploying more people.

The result? A network that, after a raid, is sometimes larger, more complex, and harder to fathom than before.

4. From ‘Catching Perpetrators’ to ‘Disrupting Networks’

We conclude with the implications for the future. Should we stop arresting people? No, but we must get smarter. It’s not about catching the “big boss” for the sake of appearances, but about strategically disrupting the structure so that recovery becomes impossible.

5. The Research Team

This research was not a solo endeavor. It is the result of a close collaboration between the University of Amsterdam and the Institute for Advanced Study.

I worked alongside:

• Dr. Vítor V. Vasconcelos (UvA/IAS/POLDER) – Game Theory & Network Dynamics
• Dr. Mike Lees (UvA/IAS/POLDER) – Computational Modeling

Together, we combined criminal intelligence data with evolutionary game theory to build the models that revealed these counter-intuitive patterns.

Want to know more? Check here:

• University of Amsterdam press release on the research: link
• Publication in PNAS: link

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