[bruu_]

How are we to know what to support as citizens? What's worse, cyberterrorism due to fundamentally insecure cryptography infrastructure, or physical terrorism due to a lack of spying capability? I am marginally more afraid of what terrorists can do with computers than what they can do with guns and bombs.

[logfromblammo]

I'm pretty sure I could do more damage with one rifle and a handful armor-penetrating rounds than with a bomb, without ever firing at--or even seeing--another human. I expect that a network attacker can do 95% of that kind of damage more remotely, but perhaps also more preventably, just using a computer. I think I could probably even forget about the rifle, and just wreak some havoc with just stuff that could be purchased at Home Depot, without even a whiff of suspicion.

It's a really good thing that I know I'm rather dependent on all that infrastructure for my easy lifestyle, and I have no good reason to go around destroying any of it.

So what I fear more than anything is someone as smart as or smarter than me, who has acquired individual motive to cause a huge amount of damage to public infrastructure.

Blowing up a high-profile building full of people, or going on a shooting rampage that leaves a bloody trail behind you, are good for getting into the news articles, but save us all from that guy out to cause sheer financial damage instead of human casualties. Soldiers are scary, but those guys that sit back, dreaming up new weapons, are simply terrifying. [0][1][2][3][4]

You don't really want to watch angry, gullible young men with a grudge. You need to watch out for that guy who can write "airliner = cruise missile; cost: ~$500" on a sticky note, then immediately move on to dream up some other way to hurt you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Wallis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fieser [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle