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horrific images of recent actions. Since September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda has festooned

its websites with a string of announcements of an impending "large attack" on US

targets. These warnings have received considerable media coverage, which has helped

to generate a widespread sense of dread and insecurity among audiences throughout

the world and especially within the United States . . .

The Internet has significantly expanded the opportunities for terrorists to secure

publicity. Until the advent of the Internet, terrorists' hopes of winning publicity

for their causes and activities depended on attracting the attention of television,

radio, or the print media. The fact that terrorists themselves have direct control

over the content of their websites offers further opportunities to shape how they

are perceived by different target audiences and to manipulate their image and the

images of their enemies. Most terrorist sites do not celebrate their violent

activities. Instead- regardless of their nature, motives, or location-most terrorist

sites emphasize two issues: the restrictions placed on freedom of expression; and

the plight of their comrades who are now political prisoners. These issues resonate

powerfully with their own supporters and are also calculated to elicit sympathy from

Western audiences that cherish freedom of expression and frown on measures to silence

political opposition . . .

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Terrorists have proven not only skillful at online marketing but also adept at mining

the data offered by the billion-some pages of the World Wide Web. They can learn from

the Internet about the schedules and locations of targets such as transportation

facilities, nuclear power plants, public buildings, airports and ports, and even

counterterrorism measures. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an

al-Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan tells its readers, "Using public

sources openly and without resorting to illegal means, it is possible to gather at

least 80 percent of all information required about the enemy." One captured al-Qaeda

computer contained engineering and structural architecture features of a dam, which

had been downloaded from the Internet and which would enable al-Qaeda engineers and

planners to simulate catastrophic failures. In other captured computers, U.S.

investigators found evidence that al-Qaeda operators spent time on sites that offer

software and programming instructions for the digital switches that run power, water,

transportation, and communications grids.

Like many other political organizations, terrorist groups use the Internet to raise

funds. Al-Qaeda, for instance, has always depended heavily on donations, and its

global fundraising network is built upon a foundation of charities, nongovernmental

organizations, and other financial institutions that use websites and Internet-based

chat rooms and forums. The fighters in the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya

have likewise used the Internet to publicize the numbers of bank accounts to which

sympathizers can contribute. And in December 2001, the U.S. government seized the

assets of a Texas-based charity because of its ties to Hamas.

In addition to soliciting financial aid online, terrorists recruit converts by using

the full panoply of website technologies (audio, digital video, etc.) to enhance the

presentation of their message. And like commercial sites that track visitors to

develop consumer profiles, terrorist organizations capture information about the

users who browse their websites. Visitors who seem most inter

ested in the organization's cause or well suited to carrying out its work are then

contacted. Recruiters may also use more interactive Internet technology to roam

online chat rooms and cyber cafes, looking for receptive members of the public,

particularly young people. The SITE Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based terrorism

research group that monitors al-Qaeda's Internet communications, has provided

chilling details ofa high-tech recruitment drive launchedin 2003 to recruit fighters

to travel to Iraq and attack U.S. and coalition forces there. The Internet also grants

terrorists a cheap and efficient means of networking. Many terrorist groups, among

them Hamas and al-Qaeda, have undergone a transformation from strictly hierarchical

organizations with designated leaders to affiliations of semi-independent cells that

have no single commanding hierarchy. Through the Internet, these loosely

interconnected groups are able to maintain contact with one another-and with members

of other terrorist groups. The Internet connects not only members of the same

terrorist organizations but also members of different groups. For instance, dozens

of sites supporting terrorism in the name of jihad permit terrorists in places as

far-removed from one another as Chechnya and Malaysia to exchange ideas and practical

information about how to build bombs, establish terror cells, and carry out

attacks . . . Al-Qaeda operatives relied heavily on the Internet in planning and

coordinating the September 11 attacks.

For all of these reasons we are just at the beginning of understanding the geopolitical

impact of the flattening of the world. On the one hand, failed states and failed

regions are places we have every incentive to avoid today. They offer no economic

opportunity and there is no Soviet Union out there competing with us for influence

over such countries. On the other hand, there may be nothing more dangerous today

than a failed state with broadband capability. That is, even failed states tend to

have telecommunications systems and satellite links, and therefore if a terrorist

group infiltrates a failed state, as al-Qaeda did with Afghanistan, it can amplify

its power enormously. As much as big powers want to stay away

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from such states, they may feel compelled to get even more deeply embroiled in them.

Think of America in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia in Chechnya, Australia in East Timor.

In the flat world it is much more difficult to hide, but much easier to get connected.

"Think of Mao at the beginning of the Chinese communist revolution," remarked Michael

Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy specialist. "The Chinese Communists had

to hide in caves in northwest China, but they could move around in whatever territory

they were able to control. Bin Laden, by contrast, can't show his face, but he can

reach every household in the world, thanks to the Internet." Bin Laden cannot capture

any territory but he can capture the imagination of millions of people. And he has,

broadcasting right into American living rooms on the eve of the 2004 presidential

election.

Hell hath no fury like a terrorist with a satellite dish and an interactive Web site.

Too Personally Insecure

In the fall of 2004,1 was invited to speak at a synagogue in Woodstock, New York,

home of the famous Woodstock music festival. I asked my hosts how was it that they

were able to get a synagogue in Woodstock, of all places, big enough to support a

lecture series. Very simple, they said. Since 9/11, Jews, and others, have been moving

from New York City to places like Woodstock, to get away from what they fear will

be the next ground zero. Right now this trend is a trickle, but it would become a

torrent if a nuclear device were detonated in any European or American city.

Since this threat is the mother of all unflatteners, this book would not be complete

without a discussion of it. We can live with a lot. We lived through 9/11. But we

cannot live with nuclear terrorism. That would un-flatten the world permanently.

The only reason that Osama bin Laden did not use a nuclear device on 9/11 was not

that he did not have the intention but that he did not

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have the capability. And since the Dell Theory offers no hope of restraining the

suicide supply chains, the only strategy we have is to limit their worst capabilities.

That means a much more serious global effort to stanch nuclear proliferation by

limiting the supply-to buy up the fissile material that is already out there,

particularly in the former Soviet Union, and prevent more states from going nuclear.

Harvard University international affairs expert Graham Allison, in his book Nuclear

Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, outlines just such a strategy for

denying terrorists access to nuclear weapons and nuclear materials. It can be done,

he insists. It is a challenge to our will and convictions, but not to our capabilities.

Allison proposes a new American-led international security order to deal with this

problem based on what he calls "a doctrine of the Three No's: No loose nukes, No new

nascent nukes, and No new nuclear states." No loose nukes, says Allison, means locking

down all nuclear weapons and all nuclear material from which bombs could be made-in

a much more serious way than we have done up till now. "We don't lose gold from Fort

Knox," says Allison. "Russia doesn't lose treasures from the Kremlin armory. So we

both know how to prevent theft of those things that are super valuable to us if we

are determined to do it." No new nascent nukes means recognizing that there is a group

of actors out there who can and do produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which

is nothing more than nuclear bombs just about to hatch. We need a much more credible,

multilateral nonprolif-eration regime that soaks up this fissile material. Finally,

no new nuclear states means "drawing a line under the current eight nuclear powers

and determining that, however unfair and unreasonable it may be, that club will have

no more members than those eight," says Allison, adding that these three steps might

then buy us time to develop a more formal, sustainable, internationally approved

regime.

It would be nice also to be able to deny the Internet to al-Qaeda and its ilk, but

that, alas, is impossible-without undermining ourselves. That is why limiting their

capabilities is necessary but not sufficient. We also have to find a way to get at

their worst intentions. If we are not going to shut down the Internet and all the

other creative and collaborative tools that have flattened the world, and if we can't

restrict access to them,

the only thing we can do is try to influence the imagination and intentions that people

bring to them and draw from them. When I raised this issue, and the broad themes of

this book, with my religious teacher, Rabbi Tzvi Marx from Holland, he surprised me

by saying that the flat world I was describing reminded him of the story of the Tower

of Babel.

How so? I asked. "The reason God banished all the people from the Tower of Babel and

made them all speak different languages was not because he did not want them to

collaborate per se," answered Rabbi Marx. "It was because he was enraged at what they

were collaborating on-an effort to build a tower to the heavens so they could become

God." This was a distortion of the human capacity, so God broke their union and their

ability to communicate with one another. Now, all these years later, humankind has

again created a new platform for more people from more places to communicate and

collaborate with less friction and more ease than ever: the Internet. Would God see

the Internet as heresy?

"Absolutely not," said Marx. "The heresy is not that mankind works together-it is

to what ends. It is essential that we use this new ability to communicate and

collaborate for the right ends-for constructive human aims and not megalomaniacal

ends. Building a tower was megalo-maniacal. Bin Laden's insistence that he has the

truth and can flatten anyone else's tower who doesn't heed him is megalomaniacal.

Collaborating so mankind can achieve its full potential is God's hope."

How we promote more of that kind of collaboration is what the final chapter is all

about.

::::: Conclusion: Imagination

::::: THIRTEEN

11/9 Versus 9/11

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-Albert Einstein

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

-Two dogs talking to each other, in a New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, July 5,

1993

Reflecting on this past decade and a half, during which the world went flat, it strikes

me that our lives have been powerfully shaped by two dates: 11/9 and 9/11. These two

dates represent the two competing forms of imagination at work in the world today:

the creative imagination of 11/9 and the destructive imagination of 9/11. One brought

down a wall and opened the windows of the world-both the operating system and the

kind we look through. It unlocked half the planet and made the citizens there our

potential partners and competitors. Another brought down the World Trade Center,

closing its Windows on the World restaurant forever and putting up new invisible and

concrete walls among people at a time when we thought 11 The dismantling of the Berlin

Wall on 11/9 was brought about by people who dared to imagine a different, more open

world-one where every human being would be free to realize his or her full potential

- and who then summoned the courage to act on that imagination. Do

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you remember how it happened? It was so simple, really: In July 1989, hundreds of

East Germans sought refuge at the West German embassy in Hungary. In September 1989,

Hungary decided to remove its border restrictions with Austria. That meant that any

East German who got into Hungary could pass through to Austria and the free world.

Sure enough, more than thirteen thousand East Germans escaped through Hungary's back

door. Pressure built up on the East German government. When in November it announced

plans to ease travel restrictions, tens of thousands of East Germans converged on

the Berlin Wall, where, on 11/9/89, border guards just opened the gates.

Someone there in Hungary, maybe it was the prime minister, maybe it was just a

bureaucrat, must have said to himself or herself, "Imagine- imagine what might happen