Ken Brown wrote: A thoughtful summary of non-US-centric view of how US technology could, probably will, come back to haunt and harm it. One of the ways the US will be harmed is by provoking its government to crackdown on what it will define as illegal use of technology. To be sure, these perceived threats will come from within the US as from outside. I have seen no media attention given to DoD Cohen's warning that technology is empowering the citizenry, business and US allies to threaten US supremacy. Comparable, say, to the DoJ's and the FBI's well-advanced orchestration of a global cybercrime (successor to organized crime) fighting regime. The acceleration of transfer of national security technology to domestic law enforcement agencies in many countries shows that borderlessness between external and internal threats is becoming the norm. Such that the most advanced technology once devoted to combatting foreign enemies is now aimed at the populace in disregard of their home countries and the once-vaunted privilege being free of threatened by their own governments. Ken's point that AP is likely to be implemented by a non-US against a US target is shrewd, and Usama Bin Laden has just about pulled that off. If he disappears but his agenda continues that will be pure AP. This is not to say that Bin Laden is not a fictional-demon of the USG, forever eluding capture -- until the moment is right to implement a Pablo Escobar. Isn't it likely that Jim Bell is just a ploy the feds are using to arouse the tax resisters in the Northwest?
Anyway, big companies make big targets for some kinds of revolutionaries, as do big fortunes. Some of them like killing the rich. This already happens. Not a lot, but it happens. AP might make it more common.
Good point, and one that the feds will happily adopt, for it is often used by the US to warrant its need for a massively overkill defense apparatus -- not that it ever does much with its vaunted hardware except provide sitting ducks.