Recently the CIA staged a practice simulation of a cyber attack used to take down the Internet. The simulated attack was called Silent Horizons and they learned quite a bit about what could happen if we fail to protect the flow of information. Now before you say no one could bring down the entire Internet. You are sadly mistaken, as we created it and mankind has those amongst us with the tools and brains to bring it all crashing down. I recommend you read up on the CIA report after it comes out on the Silent Horizon project and while you are at it; I recommend this book as well:

Tom Clancys Net Force-CyberNation

I would have to say this is a very provocative book and extremely interesting, story line and characters were interesting as well. Very high-tech thoughts on the future and things to come; I enjoyed it very much. It was interesting how the good guys, took shifts trying to catch the bad guys. Almost like zone defense in time. Since the techno geeks do not sleep and the enforcement officers do not work weekends, they trade off befriending these individuals by way of email, even though the bad guys who are really the good guys know it. The people in the story the new generation did not understand international property rights of information, similar to the Asian way of thinking in their culture. Surely this will be the cause of future wars and mist trust between government and people. The technology already is running away from the government now today as they attempt to stifle free enterprise, but as it has been said in the past you can lock up some ones body, but you cannot lock up their mind. In other words not everyone is motivated by money and the real thinkers and tinkerers will not stop simply because there is no money.

The Net Force is inept and cannot outsmart the outsmarters. The hackers were causing economic disruption and collecting more customers for their system and therefore be a member of their nation within the nation. This is an interesting idea. The difference between the RW Real World and VR Virtual Reality World. Where do you want to take your vacation? If it is in the RW, who pays for the roads if you are a member of the cyber nation and if you are a member of the RW, whose VR, which system are you on, and who can choose the rules? This is a great book, not the story line, not the characters, not the cover, but the thought provoking ideas and foresight. Best book Ive read this year.