e politically or militarily. For example, in 1998, when the Pentagon was monitoring the possibility for another military confrontation with Iraq, the Air Force was convinced that the Iraqis were attempting to hack into their computer logistics network. However, according to a television interview with NBC News, by Rep. Mac Thornberry, a member of the Armed Services committee, “Turns out it was just a bunch of kids from California joy riding on the internet… But that shows why, if you have a cyber intrusion at the Pentagon, you can’t just send an aircraft carrier battle group off the coast of country X.” While no damage was done by that intrusion, the point is clear. The possibility that any nation’s adversaries can steal their strategic information is real, and it provides a real threat. Another element of IT that has an effect on the security of nations is the fact that IT is fairly inexpensive. When it was built in the early 1960s, the North American Air Defense command, resting deep in a mountain in the Colorado Rockies, represented the height of technological prowess. But that was a time when the Pentagon provided most of the American market for sophisticated electronics. Now it makes up less than 1% of that market; almost any medium-sized office has the sort of computer power that it was once worth hollowing out a mountain to protect. When the hollow mountain is fitted with new systems, they will be nothing more than customized versions of the kind of moderately priced workstation familiar to medium-sized companies everywhere. In terms of technical capability, the development of IT allows just about anyone in the world with a relatively small amount of capital to have the same technology. Recently, Sony of Japan’s new video game product, Playstation 2, has had export restrictions placed on it because of certain hardware contained inside it. The PS2’s central processor, a 128-bit microproc...
