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. ----- http://jya.com/pothot.txt (30 kb) POT_hot (in 2 parts)