The Next World War: Computers Are the Weapons and the Front Line Is Everywhere
A veteran defense journalist, now chief executive officer of United Press International, Adams has written a book on war in the information age, drawing heavily on the voluminous periodical literature. After disquisitions on the menace posed by cyberterrorists, who can, in theory, paralyze financial systems and cause ghastly industrial accidents with a few keystrokes, meditations on the effects of instantaneous worldwide news, and snippets of technologically informed fiction (very much ˆ la Tom Clancy), the author comes to a grim conclusion: "America today looks uncomfortably like Goliath, arrogant in its power, armed to the teeth, ignorant of its weakness." A sensationalist judgment, perhaps, but not necessarily wrong.
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Since it first emerged in 1997, avian influenza has become deadlier and more resilient. It has infected 109 people and killed 59 of them. If the virus becomes capable of human-to-human transmission and retains its extraordinary potency, humanity could face a pandemic unlike any ever witnessed.
The United States may be an uncontested military superpower, but it remains defenseless against a new mode of attack: information warfare. As the military, the private sector, and Washington grow increasingly dependent on computers and information networks, they also grow more vulnerable to cyber-attack. Cyberspace is becoming the new front line of warfare, and private citizens are the new prime target. U.S. policymakers and technology entrepreneurs must wake up to this threat and build a wall of defense -- now.
