Military computer and communications systems are "increasingly compromised'' and vulnerable to attack by hackers and high-tech enemies, concluded a Pentagon-sponsored study released Monday. Although the Defense Department is working to improve cybersecurity, the study said technological advances are outpacing the Pentagon's sluggish moves to protect vital information used in today's battles. James McGroddy, chairman of the National Research Council committee that wrote the study said command, control, computer, communications and intelligence systems "the nervous system of the military'' are aging fast while the high-tech tools to attack it are generally thought to be improving by a factor of 10 every five years.

The Defense Department, the report said, "is in an increasingly compromised position. The rate at which information systems are being relied on outstrips the rate at which they are being protected.'' Art Money, the civilian official in charge of the Pentagon's information security, told a Senate Armed Service Committee panel last week that the military is working to better protect its more than 2 million computers from outside penetration and inside attack.

According to Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, the head of health policy research at the British Medical Association, "genetic information is already being used to enhance biological weapons. Biological and genetic weapons designed to kill specific ethnic or racial groups are no longer the stuff of science fiction...A designer plague that would only kill Serbs or a toxin engineered to affect Israelis or Kurds does not exist yet but advances in biotechnology and the mapping of all human genes could be misused to develop lethal weapons within five to 10 years."

Around the world the crises pile up, and the collage of headlines does not make a pretty picture. In Kosovo, babies die of cold on hillsides where mothers have fled to save their lives. In Sierra Leone, madmen posing as a rebel army cut off the hands of teen-aged boys and trap families in their homes to torch them. Angolans shoot down relief planes. Haiti spirals back into chaos. And the chief judge of an international tribunal is stopped cold at Serbia's border when she tries to investigate crimes against humanity in Kosovo.

Who's in charge here?

In the last year of the century, the newer, saner world order which was confidently anticipated when communism collapsed a decade ago is nowhere to be seen. The problem is magnified by the characters of the combatants and of the causes. A great many of today's conflicts are civil wars, and 100 years of conventions written to make war civilized are useless pieces of paper in these fights. Ordinary people are the targets and the fodder of rogue militias. Nine times more civilians than combatants die. Battles are fought over no apparent principles, only greed and power.

UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, recently reported that nearly 50 million children and women are in immediate and extreme danger worldwide, causing an agency better known for immunization drives and schoolbooks to rethink its programs in countries where disaster preparedness may have to be given priority instead.

With international peacekeeping all but dead, armies of relief workers are on the front lines. But these angels of mercy are cut no slack either. More aid workers than peacekeeping troops are now dying in the field. At least 173 U.N. relief officials have been killed in about five years.

"Ideas are much smaller now," said Arthur Helton, an international lawyer who directs migration projects at the Open Society Institute. "The circumstances are far more driven by self interest or the perception of self interest." Conflicts, he added, now ride on causes that are "regional, subregional, even to the point of clans--the atomization of societies."

Small ideas. Big egos. War in Africa. Butchery in the Balkans. Could this be reminiscent of the start of the 20th century as much as a definition of its end?

The odds are that an American city will be destroyed by a nuclear weapon within ten years, an architect of the U.N. weapons inspection program in Iraq predicted. Ambassador Robert Gallucci gave a chilling overview of the parlous state of nuclear proliferation at a luncheon sponsored by the World Affairs Council.

His nightmare scenario: "One of these days, one of these governments fabricates one or two nuclear weapons, gives it to a terrorism group created for this purpose. The group brings one of these bombs into Baltimore by boat, and drives another one up to Pittsburgh.

"And then the message comes in to the White House: Adjust your policy in the Middle East, or on Tuesday you lose Baltimore, and on Wednesday you lose Pittsburgh. Tuesday comes, and we lose Baltimore. What does the United States do?"

His estimate of the likelihood of the nightmare scenario coming true: better than 50-50.

For years, whenever the CIA director was asked by a member of Congress how long it would take for Iran, Iraq, or North Korea to build a nuclear weapon, he would say, "about ten years," Gallucci said. The correct answer now, Gallucci said, is: "I don't know, senator. They may have it already."

It takes fissile material about the size of a softball to build a nuclear bomb. There are thousands of tons of enriched uranium and plutonium in Russia, much of it poorly secured.

The primary threat won't come from missiles, Gallucci predicted. "Ships, planes and trucks are also good ways to deliver nuclear weapons. We don't have very good defenses against those, either. If you want to sneak a nuclear weapon into the United States, hide it in a bale of marijuana."

Hackers have reportedly seized control of one of Britain's military communication satellites and issued blackmail threats, Reuters quoted The Sunday Business newspaper as reporting. The paper, quoting security sources, said the intruders altered the course of one of Britain's four satellites which are used by defense planners and military forces around the world.

"This is not just a case of computer nerds mucking about. This is very, very serious and the blackmail threat has made it even more serious," one security source said.

Cyberterrorists are plotting all manner of heinous attacks that if successful could "destabilize and eventually destroy targeted states and societies," according to a gloomy new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The report, which offers recommendations for averting cyberwarfare, has in its introduction alone enough dire news to make the year 2000 computer glitch seem like a minute blip on the worry scale.

Consider this: "Information warfare specialists at the Pentagon estimate that a properly prepared and well-coordinated attack by fewer than 30 computer virtuosos strategically located around the world, with a budget of less than $10 million, could bring the United States to its knees."

"Such a strategic attack, mounted by a cyberterrorist group … would shut down everything from electric power grids to air traffic control centers. A combination of cyberweapons, poison gas, and even nuclear devices could produce a global Waterloo for the United States."

For those who believe U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have a handle on the threat of cyberterrorism, consider this: "In fact, law enforcement's electronic capabilities are from 5 to 10 years behind the transnational crime curve."

With that comforting thought in mind, the report notes, "Cyberterrorists, acting for rogue states or groups that have declared holy war against the United States, are known to be plotting America's demise as a superpower."