It cannot have been lost on terrorists, their nurturing states, as well as rogue nations like North Korea, that cyber warfare is a cheap means of waging asymmetrical warfare just begging to be used by economically and even technologically inferior players. Even North Korea can marshal assets enough to build a bomb, to build rockets, and to hack into America.
But why invest in all that hardware which leaves an unmistakable trail when you can do it from some undisclosed location in some Third World hellhole like Nigeria while sitting in your pajamas?
If we are confronted by a pathologically and ideologically distorted Islam, who are anyway indifferent to the pain to the expected in retribution if found out, we can only expect that they almost certainly will resort to cyber warfare. It has so many advantages, it is cheap, it does not have to be transported over oceans and passed through customs inspectors, it need not be safely assembled and detonated in the homeland homeland. All it takes is a few hackers who can be hired and a few keystrokes.
Even if no attack materializes, terrorists will have achieved many of their aims. They will have generated fear, they will have distorted the American system of individual liberty by requiring our government to spy on our own people. They will have caused us to build layer after layer of regulation, rendering us less efficient, increasing costs, and adding to inflation. They will cause us to mistrust one another. They will have increased the power of the state which is a Grail of the left and also of Islam which does not distinguish between Islam and the state. They will cause more and more Americans to look to appeasement. Many more powerful consequences are to be anticipated and they will all be visited upon us on cheap. Our costs mount, their costs remain relatively trifling.
