TEXT A
During the 1970’s and 1980’s political extremism and terrorism frequently focused on "national liberation" and economic issues. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the ending of its covert funding and encouragement of terrorism led to a decline in the militant and violent left-wing terrorist groups that were a feature of the age.
The 1990% have seen the development of a "new terrorism". This is not to say that state-backed terrorism has ceased, but rather that the spectrum of terrorism has widened. This new extremism is frequently driven by religious fervor, is transnational, sanctions extreme violence, and may often be millenialist. The new terrorism may seek out military or government targets, but it also seeks out symbolic civilian targets, and the victims have mostly been innocent civilians.
Growing concern about this new terrorism has been paralleled by concern about the employment of the new information and communication technologies (ICT’s).
ICT’s offer a new dimension for political extremists and terrorists. They allow the diffusion of command and control; they allow boundless new opportunities for communication, and they allow the players to target the information stores, processes and communications of their opponents. The sophistication of the modern nation-state, and its dependency on computer-based ICT’s, make the state ever more vulnerable.
The use of ICT’s to influence, modify, disrupt or damage a nation state, its institutions or population by influencing the media, or by subversion, has been called "netwar". The full range of weapons in the cyberspace armory can be employed in netwar; from propaganda campaigns at one level to interference with databases and networks at the other. What particularly distinguishes netwar from other forms of war is that it targets information and communications, and may be used to alter thinking or disrupt planned actions. In this sense it can be distinguished from earlier forms of warfare —economic wars that target the means of production, and political wars that target leadership and government.
Netwar is therefore of particular interest to those engaged in non-military war, or those operating at sub-state level. Clearly nation states might also consider it, as an adjunct to military war or as an option prior to moving on to military war. So far, however, it appears to be of greater interest to extremist advocacy groups and terrorists. Because there are no physical limits or boundaries, netwar has been adopted by groups who operate across great distances or transnationally. The growth of such groups, and their growing powers in relation to those of nation states, suggests an evolving power-based relationship for both. Military strategist Martin Van Creveld has suggested that war in the future is more likely to be waged between such groups and states rather than between states and states.
Most modern adversaries of nation states in the realm of low intensity conflict, such as international terrorists, single-issue extremists and ethnic and religious extremists are organized in networks, although their leadership may sometimes be hierarchical. Law enforcement and security agencies therefore often have difficulty in engaging in low intensity conflict against such networks because they are ill suited to do so. Their doctrine, training and modus operandi have, all too often, been predicated on combating a hierarchy of command, like their own.
Only now are low-intensity conflict and terrorism recognized as "strategic" threats to nation states, and countries which until very recently thought that terrorism was something that happened elsewhere, have become victims themselves.
The Tokyo subway attack by the Aum Shinriko and the Oklahoma City bombing would have been unthinkable a generation ago, and not only was the civil population unprepared, but also law enforcement. And this despite clear warning signs that such attacks were in the offing.
The potential for physical conflict to be replaced by attacks on information infrastructures has caused states to rethink their concepts of warfare, threats and national assets, at a time when information is recognized as a national asset. The adoption of new information technologies and the use of new communication media, such as the Internet, create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by individuals, organizations and states.
We can infer from the passage that ______.