Discoveries and challenges

We return to what we said at the start of this volume. We have reported on 80 black spots found across the regions of the globe, showing how they have led us to rethink sovereignty and the nature of the global economy. We have made discoveries about the nature of the global illicit economy as well as how globalization appears to be facilitating the development of smaller sovereign units rather than moving us toward global governance. But we have also come face-to-face with a set of challenges that confront those authorities engaged in understanding how the organizations involved in transnational criminal activities see the world and conduct their activities. These challenges raise issues that law enforcement as well as national, regional, and international government structures are going to encounter in dealing with this black spots organized world. We are interested in ways others have thought about or studied the challenges that we have raised in this chapter. Indeed, this chapter and book have merely laid the foundation for the study of the black spots world. Our intention is to contribute to what others have done in rethinking sovereignty and the global economy by providing an initial exploration of the map of the world as viewed through the eyes of insurgent, terrorist, and transnational criminal organizations.