POT_hot

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct, Lead Essay: 
 
   "Postmodern Terrorism. The terrorism of the future may be 
   far more destructive than terrorism as we have known it." 
    
   An informative survey and pot-heat by Walter Laqueur. 
 
      Terrorism's prospects, often overrated by the media, 
      the public, and some politicians, are improving as its 
      destructive potential increases. Terrorism has 
      replaced wars between nations of the 1800s and 1900s. 
 
      In the future, terrorists will be individuals or 
      like-minded people working in very small groups. An 
      individual may possess the technical competence to 
      steal, buy, or manufacture the weapons he or she needs 
      for a terrorist purpose. The ideologies such 
      individuals and minigroups espouse are likely to be 
      even more aberrant than those of larger groups. And 
      terrorists working alone or in very small groups will 
      be more difficult to detect unless they make a major 
      mistake or are discovered by accident. 
 
      Society has also become vulnerable to a new kind of 
      terrorism, in which the destructive power of both the 
      individual terrorist and terrorism as a tactic are 
      infinitely greater. The advanced societies of today 
      are more dependent every day on electronic 
      information. That exposes enormous vital areas of 
      national life to mischief or sabotage by any computer 
      hacker, and concerted sabotage could render a country 
      unable to function. 
 
      Why assassinate a politician or indiscriminately kill 
      people when an attack on electronic switching will 
      produce far more dramatic and lasting results? If the 
      new terrorism directs its energies toward information 
      warfare, its destructive power will be exponentially 
      greater than any it wielded in the past -- greater 
      even than it would be with biological and chemical 
      weapons. The single successful one could claim many 
      more victims, do more material damage, and unleash far 
      greater panic than anything the world has yet 
      experienced. 
 
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   http://jya.com/pothot.txt  (30 kb) 
 
   POT_hot  (in 2 parts)