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Subject:
Take the hostage out of the picture - virtual government
vfrickey
12/4/2003 1:00:48 PM
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In the movie "Speed," the SWAT cops played by Keanu Reeves and Jeff Bridges are trying to rescue a booby-trapped elevator full of people, and while they're doing that, the older cop (Bridges) asks the younger one (Reeves) what he would do if confronted by a gunman holding a hostage at gunpoint. Reeves thinks for a minute and says "Shoot the hostage - take her out of the picture" A few minutes later, Bridges' character is held at gunpoint by the man who set the boobytrap. Reeves' character shoots Bridges' character in the leg, leaving the terrorist stunned for a response.
Mass terrorism involves a handful of people killing or threatening to kill hostages or innocent bystanders in order to undermine the people's confidence in their government.
Both Paul and Final Historian make the point that various WMD would disrupt government and society in general. As far as it goes, good point.
But as a nation, America already has the capacity to resist terrorist disruptions - our phone system.
America's phone system is increasingly becoming resistant to terrorist attack. With the widespread use of fiber optics to replace copper wire as "landline," even electromagnetic pulse from use of nuclear explosives in the ionosphere is a solvable problem.
So what? Well, there's no real reason why Congress has to meet physically, is there? Every cable viewer in the country has a seat inside the House and Senate chambers and committee rooms, as well as Parliament - C-Span 1 and 2 are thrown in with most cable packages. Wonderful antidote for insomnia.
But modern technology also makes it possible to dispense with the physical meetings shown on C-Span altogether. All of those speeches could be made, and votes cast electronically.
The problem for the ambitious terrorist who wants to destroy American government has just been made more complex - instead of hitting one city with a special weapon, the terrorist has to hit any number of locations - as many as 550 to get every senator, congressman and the President and his cabinet. If we're at all bright about it, many of those locations will be secret.
This is a much more satisfactory way of insuring governmental continuity than maintaining alternate centers of government at places like Mount Weather (locations which are probably better known to enemy agents and would-be terrorists than they are to the people whose taxes pay for them all).
Think about it - Americans already buy books and do all sorts of other shopping online because it's convenient. Why not govern ourselves thay way, too.
The whole corpus of American bureaucracy could be streamlined and much of it moved to its employees' homes. If the phone, Internet and cable is simply standardized to the broadband fiber-optic standard, there are very few bureaucratic functions which couldn't be handled that way, are there?
This is one government reform that would pay dividends in short order. Much of the General Services Admninistration's budget could be slashed and applied for more urgent matters as Federal office buildings around the nation are shut and sold off, or at least converted from rabbit warrens for Federal employees to Internet server facilities (in which case, their utility bills would fall dramatically as the air-conditioning system is channelled to just the server rooms and a few offices for the server maintenance crew).
This reform also imposes productivity improvements across the board on government agencies. Virtual government is efficient government, and the documentation of every government transaction in the virtual world is both automatic and more accessible than it would at present (where every document exists in several filed-away paper copies as a well as a few electronic ones).
Virtual government in a secure, terrorist-proof electronic setting would, along with Ecommerce, Email and other virtual activities would drastically reduce the number of opportunities for terrorists to get attention by striking at us with weapons of mass destruction.
It would also create a much deadlier foe for the terrorists as law enforcement, military and intelligence activities become more powerful and focused on the task of finding and arresting terrorists. |
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