Learning from the “Dark Side” – Identifying, accessing and interviewing illicit non-state actors

Over the past 15 years I have sought to understand whether drug traffi ckers and terrorists learn from information and experience and, if so, how this practice unfolds in organizational settings. Organizational learning is a cultural phenomenon. Gaining insight into this process requires access to cultural data that capture the “facts” of the behavior being studied. 1 Knowledge of these facts are not randomly distributed within a given population but are shared among certain people, some of whom know more about the activity than others. To understand how illicit non-state actors change their practices in response to feedback, including government efforts to destroy them, researchers require access to experts versed in the values, beliefs and behaviors these actors exhibit. The best way to discover whether and how traffi ckers and terrorists learn is to ask them, and the security offi cials charged with stopping them.