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The suburbs of Washington, from Alexandria in the south to Dulles Airport in the west, make up the defense industry’s fertile crescent. Within a short drive of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the rest of the national security state, one immaculate office park after another rises above the oleander, gleaming facades capped with muscular logos [...]

Traffic on the many parts of the Internet slowed dramatically for hours early Saturday, the apparent effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection that overwhelmed the world’s digital pipelines and interfered with Web browsing and delivery of e-mail. Sites monitoring the health of the Internet reported significant slowdowns globally. Experts said the electronic attack bore remarkable [...]

“The chance that the U.S. government will become a police state because it is better able to analyze private transactions for signs of terrorism is virtually nil; the chance would be greater, however, if the country were to experience a series of devastating attacks and confidence in the government’s ability to protect the public safety [...]

Clarke, a counterterrorism official in the Clinton administration, acknowledged that terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda haven’t turned the Internet into a weapon. But he cautioned against complacency. For years, he said, counterterrorism experts never thought terrorists would launch strikes such as the Sept. 11 attacks within the United States, because they wanted to use [...]