Presidential efforts to prepare the nation for information warfare have been too weak to avoid an "electronic Waterloo," according to a three-year assessment of the growing threat to national security released Tuesday by a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded in its report that a directive issued in May by President Clinton to protect the information systems that run the nation's water, power, banking and other core industries has not done enough to protect these systems from possible debilitating cyberattacks. The directive, based on recommendations made by the Presidential Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, required federal agencies to identify key computer systems and to work with private companies to ramp up the nation's defenses against electronic attacks.

"The president's commission has identified only the tip of a very large iceberg," according to the report. "The battleground of the future will encompass the very foundations of America's knowledge-based, high-tech economy. There are now info-guerillas intent on doing major damage to the citadel of capitalism, and cybergeniuses in their late teens and early 20s are the new front-line fighters, arguably more important to the nation's defense than the men and women who fought the country's wars in the past."

The report was compiled with the advice of a steering committee packed with heavy-hitters in the national security arena, including Defense Secretary William Cohen, five former directors of the CIA and several members of Congress.

The report recommends that the president issue a new executive order outlining U.S. policy, including requiring a top-down review of existing organizations assigned responsibilities related to information warfare. It also recommends that the government identify a plan to ensure the continuity of services in the event of a cyberattack and that it work to forge a partnership with the private sector for preparing for such an attack.

Other recommendations include revamping U.S. intelligence operations and the military to prepare for the emerging electronic threats, which differ from the traditional threats posed to national security.

A story by three senior officers in Airpower Journal, the professional quarterly of the U.S. Air Force, portrays a turn-of-the-century scenario by which North Korea could cripple the United States through a combination of cyber-warfare and biological attack.

The article is written by U.S. Air Force captains Fred Kennedy, Rory Welch and Byron Fessler. It outlines, in fictional form, a successful North Korean campaign to inflict strategic paralysis on the United States through a combination of cyber and biological attacks.

"As outlined in the article, a combined cyber and biological strike would, indeed, inflict strategic paralysis on the United States, and, in my opinion, leave us unable to deal with a major international crisis," a senior intelligence officer told WorldNetDaily.

He added: "Imagine this scenario: With war in Korea looming, key U.S. computer networks suddenly crash. Banking and finance transactions grind to a halt. Much of the nation plunges into darkness when the power grid collapses. Information systems, including cable TV and the Internet, are no longer available. Meanwhile, there's a massive anthrax outbreak in the Northeast corridor, from New York to the nation's capital. Millions become ill, and thousands die, including the president, vice president and much of the Cabinet. Amid national panic, the 'new' president, formerly the Education secretary, suddenly learns that North Korean tanks are rolling toward Seoul, and a Chinese attack against Taiwan is underway. How do we respond? Could we recover from such an attack? Sound far-fetched? Believe me, it can--and may--happen."

"The weapons industry has created fortunes tainted with blood," Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said as he condemned the world's $780 billion arms business. "We cannot let the free market rule international arms trade," Arias said, as he called for curbing the arms business during a speech at an information technology conference in Miami.

Arias questioned the wisdom of devoting so much of the world's resources to weapons of destruction. "People, especially in developing countries, need more schools and health clinics and not new helicopters or F-16 fighter planes," he said.

Noting that the United States is the largest arms exporter in the world, with 45 percent of all arms sales, Arias criticized the Clinton administration for lifting the ban on arms sales to Latin America, which was first implemented by former President Jimmy Carter. The U.S., Arias noted, "may be an economic superpower, may be a military superpower, but it is not a moral superpower as the world wants."

Israel's military intelligence branch believes that a deadlock in Middle East peacemaking has increased the likelihood of war in 1999, Israeli security sources said. Much of the appraisal is pegged to a target date of May 1999, when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has said he will declare an independent Palestinian state if talks with Israel on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza are not completed.

Israel has said any unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood would trigger a unilateral Israeli response, suggesting that Israel might annex parts of the West Bank and Gaza still under its control. The report said the Palestinians would likely mobilize violent street protests in response. The Palestinian Authority could simultaneously activate its 36,000 armed police against Israeli forces.

The report says Israel's arch-foe Syria was continuing to intensively upgrade its military capabilities and that the Syrian army had prepared several scenarios for hostilities with Israel, including a possible surprise attack on the Israeli-held Golan Heights in a bid to restart political talks on the fate of the strategic plateau.

On all the maps, the beautiful, bustling island 100 miles off the coast of China is clearly labeled: Taiwan. The swarms of tourists and businessmen who arrive at the cavernous Chiang Kai-shek International Airport know they have landed in Taiwan. Even hostile communist officials in Beijing sometimes refer to their old foes, the Nationalists, as "the authorities on Taiwan."

But if the government on the island should ever begin calling itself the Republic of Taiwan, signaling that it is declaring its full independence from the mainland, the most likely reply from the People's Republic of China across the straits would be a military attack and a war the U.S. would have trouble staying out of.

The uncomfortable truth is that Taiwan is already independent in all but name and that Beijing is sharpening its weapons to reverse the process. Last month Chinese President Jiang Zemin summoned his top officials for a three-day review of Taiwan policy and urged them to "speed up the reunification of the motherland."

Under U.S. tutelage Taiwan has modernized its economy, built a thriving democracy, opened up a free press. It is one of the world's leading trading nations and one of the most prosperous. And yet, by succeeding, Taiwan has become a problem for Washington. Taipei's dynamic de facto independence may one day trigger a Chinese ultimatum: blockade or attack. It will then be up to the U.S. to decide whether Taiwan's status quo has a future.

Sitting on the patio of his lavish home in suburban Pretoria, Eeben Barlow poured tea and basked in the late summer sun, looking more like a successful businessman than a hardened, elite Special Forces operator of the now defunct Apartheid-era South African Defense Force (SADF). In fact, he is both.

At the center of Barlow's synthesis of commerce and soldiering skills is his highly successful private corporate army known as Executive Outcomes, or EO. The activities of EO, the clients it serves, and the global transnational corporate elite (including the DeBeers diamond cartel, Texaco and Gulf-Chevron) which fund its operations, offer an intriguing look into the realities of the emerging world order.

"As a private corporate entity, EO is able to operate without the restrictions of any particular nation's flag leading our soldiers into battle," says Barlow. "Organizations such as the UN and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) can make use of EO without partiality in negating the speedy resolution of conflict in any given country utilizing our services. Our employees have over five-thousand man years of military knowledge, combat and training experience."

EO is able to provide private counter-insurgency operations, peacekeeping forces, and the muscle for corporations to control gold and diamond mines, oil and other natural resources in a variety of failed states which stretch to the four corners of the world.

"We offer a variety of services to legitimate governments, including infantry training, clandestine warfare, counterintelligence programs, reconnaissance, escape and evasion, special forces selection and training and even parachuting," adds Barlow. EO is equipped with Soviet MiG fighter jets, Puma and East Bloc helicopters, state-of-the-art artillery, tanks and other armaments. Barlow pointed out that EO boasts an array of no less than 500 military advisors and 3,000 highly trained multi-national special forces soldiers.

In its short history, EO has fought in South and West Africa, South America, and the Far East. An example of one of its initial tasks was to assist a South American Drug Enforcement Agency in conducting "discretionary warfare" against local drug producers. Other EO operations, stretching from Angola to Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea, always involve millions of dollars of cash payments augmented by mining, logging and oil rights to lucrative geologic deposits.

"It's kind of ironic that when Eeben fought for Apartheid, the white race, anti-communism and Christianity, he wound up without any money and was shoved out the door," says Willem Ratte, a former member of the elite Rhodesian Scouts and the man who trained and honed Barlow's superlative fighting skills. "Now that he's fighting on behalf of the interests of the multinational corporations, he's become a wealthy man," adds Ratte.

"We've undergone a paradigm shift in consciousness, in our interpretation of reality," says respected South African political analyst Ed Cain, editor of the erudite journal Signposts. "We are living in the post-Christian era. The free world and the 'former' communist world are being merged. There are no more countries, no more Japanese, no more Mexicans. There are only rich and poor, hi-tech and low-tech, Northern and Southern Hemisphere. It’s almost like a new form of virtual Apartheid."