The carnage has spread far beyond Silicon Valley. Seems much of our economy is now shaking because of dot com fall out. Even major television networks, ABC, NBC and CBS blame their current advertising revenue woes on dot com failures. Certainly Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Intel are suffering from fall-off in demand for their Internet-boom products. Many observers blame downturn itself on popping dot com bubble. I guess failure of a few hundred Internet start-ups can drag down entire global economy. So whose fault is it?

Is it dot com executives fault?

Should we blame 26-year-old college dropout who was funded to tune of $15 or $20 million to develop a cool new way for teens to communicate with each other over Net? We say, "Hey, how do you make any money off bringing a bunch a kids to chat rooms and games?" I say, how is a 26-year-old college dropout supposed to question business model of a company that has been funded to draw audience rather than to create profits? Remember eyeball rush? The dot com start-up kids were not given mandate to build profitable revenue streams. They were funded to build audience. They did.

Is it venture capitalist's fault?

In fact, I've read dozens of articles over last few months explaining in great detail concepts of cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism. One of central assumptions of many of these documents is value of internet is obvious to any enemy of United States and rest of free world. It has even been argued that Code Red may very well be a form of cyber-warfare, perhaps even created by a quasi-government agency of some kind.

Now light has dawned and I understand a basic fact which I did not fully gasp until I saw a plane fly through World Trade Center building.

The job of a terrorist is to create terror.

Attacks through a communication system such as internet do not create terror. Yes, you can do one heck of a lot of damage to American infrastructure by sending attacks through phone lines. You can cause electric power blackouts, banking failures and many other malicious acts.

A computer programmer shutting off power to a city is no where near as horrifying as watching a 110 story building crumbling to dust.

What could a cyber-terrorist do?

- Shut down stock market? The September 11th terrorists closed it down for two or more days.

- Get their attacks shown on evening news? A cyber attack would get no where near coverage as terrorists got on this day.

- Crash a jet? The terrorists did far more than that.

- Ground a few planes? The terrorists grounded every plane in United States.

- Shut down power grid for a city? Again, nothing compared to a real terrorist attack.

That's what we in IT miss ... we are terrified beyond belief by failure of technology. Most people, however, do not have anywhere near intimate knowledge and understanding of shear power that we possess.

You've got to understand, terrorists are not intelligent beings. They are stupid as stones. Do you really think Usama Bin Laden is intelligent? It does not take brains to ruthlessly kill thousands of innocent human beings. A volcano or mudslide can do that just fine without a single brain cell.