Is it my fault?

How about media? Oh, we hyped it all right. But we hype everything. Right now we're hyping crash. The dramatic rise of Internet bubble has been business story of my professional career. Of course we're going to cover it with raving enthusiasm. But remember, deep skepticism ran through business press simultaneously with gushing over New Economy. All told, I think business media did a balanced job reporting dot com raise and collapse.

Does all this mean I don't blame anybody? Yes, pretty much. The dot com phenomenon has included both successes and failures every step of way. Even now, with those dire statistics of Internet crashes, I can make a case for continued success of e-business transformation.

What about all this good news?

Did you know that virtually every large company is still hip-deep in process of re-making itself into a Internet-centric entity? More than 50 percent of corporate capital spending is going to information technology, up from 15 percent in 1990. Did you know growth in consumer spending over Internet will exceed 45 percent this year? Spending at travel sites alone will grow more than 50 percent. Did you know total spending over Internet will exceed half a trillion dollars this year, far beyond craziest dream of just three years ago? In Internet world, these are best of times and these are worst of times.

A terrorist would have to understand internet and cyber world before he could pull off an attack. On top of that, he would have to gain a realization that United States depended upon this infrastructure, and then he would have to learn all about it.

We take it for granted because thirteen year olds in United States and Europe create viruses and worms in their sleep. As a security manager for a major company, I see dozens of viruses every single day, so I just assume that other people understand these things. Well, guess what, power of internet is not obvious to ignorant renegade Saudi princes who have been living in wilderness of Afghanistan for most of their lives.

Certainly it is easier for this uncivilized savage, dumber than earth barbarian (Usama Bin Laden and every other terrorist) to make a gasoline bomb than it is to create one paragraph of intelligent writing. Anyone can make a gasoline bomb out of an airplane, and it certainly does not take many working brain cells to crash one into a skyscraper.

You also have to understand that internet was designed and built to survive a major, country-wide nuclear attack. That's a lot more power than any terrorist scum is likely to possess.

Is there a danger of cyber-terrorism? Sure there is. This is a critical piece of world infrastructure and it must be protected, just like any other communication or transportation line.

There is actually more of a danger of cyber-warfare than of cyber-terrorism. Countries do understand value of internet, especially highly civilized nations. Generals and soldiers do understand value of good communications (which is really what internet is all about). One of first and most important tasks of any warmaster is to disrupt communications.

Terrorists do not want to disrupt communications. In fact, that's last thing on their mind, since they survive only as long as communications remain intact. Imagine what would happen to any terrorist whose acts were simply ignored. If no terror resulted, then why try and cause terror? Thus, terrorist targets are specifically chosen to be most visible, and thus most communicated. You won't find many terrorists who bomb isolated targets out in Siberia - who would see it?

That, in a nut shell, is why terrorism never has and never will win a war. They are not playing to win - they are playing to terrify. They do cause damage and they do cause, well, terror - but they do not win.

Attacking via internet might win a war, but it will not cause terror. Thus, it is not a highly tempting target for terrorists. A terrorist attack against it is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely.