Rhizomatic Threats in Practice: Applied Cybersecurity Modeling for Emergent Threat Landscapes

Introduction
The rise of decentralized digital infrastructures and flexible adversary ecosystems has destabilized traditional cybersecurity assumptions. Threat actors today often operate not within rigid hierarchies but through fluid, self-organizing networks resembling rhizomes—a concept introduced by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987).[1] A rhizome, as described in A Thousand Plateaus, is a non-hierarchical, horizontally propagating structure with no defined center, characterized by multiplicity, constant regeneration, and no defined beginning or end. These "rhizomatic threats" lack fixed command centers, readily mutate identities, and form . . .