Word: disruptive
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That's the textbook version at least. In practice, nature often kills hurricanes before they are born. For example, the intermittent warm-water current in the Pacific Ocean known as El Ni¤o generates westerly winds that reach halfway around the globe to disrupt cloud formations that might otherwise form hurricanes. In fact, says Colorado State's Gray, a major reason there have been so few hurricanes in recent years is that El Nino has continued on a more or less nonstop basis...
...MOST DANGEROUS ADVERSARY in a potential cyberwar isn't the Iranians, Iraqis, Russians or even the Japanese. It is Americans. The emerging cyberpunk culture has already demonstrated the capability to disrupt our lives and make headlines via electronics. If a computer virus turns out to be the cheapest, easiest and most efficient weapon for terrorists, they will use one. The end result could be equivalent to a terrorist nuclear weapon. The scary thing is that all the tools needed are in place today. JAY THOMAS Princeton, New Jersey Via E-mail...
...collapse of the U.S.S.R. A group of international organizations led by American environmental investigator Steven Galster cobbled together the funding to put rangers back to work, and the newly formed patrols have been in the field since January 1994. The so-called Amba patrols have been working to disrupt poachers and their trade networks. Amba was given a boost this summer when Prime Minister Chernomyrdin issued a decree calling for a national strategy to protect tigers and their habitat. Unfortunately, protecting the forests that are home to tigers and other creatures is one environmental problem that is literally...
...cyberwar revolution, however, poses serious problems for the U.S. Some are ethical: Is it a war crime to crash another country's stock market? More perilous are the security concerns for the U.S., where a tyrant with inexpensive technology could unplug NASDAQ or terrorist hackers could disrupt an airport tower. Giddy excitement over infowar may be shaken by an electronic Pearl Harbor. Last year the government's Joint Security Commission called U.S. vulnerability to infowar "the major security challenge of this decade and possibly the next century...
Hackers may be the new mercenaries, available to the highest bidder. During the Gulf War, according to Pentagon officials, a group of Dutch hackers offered to disrupt the U.S. military's deployment to the Middle East for $1 million. Saddam Hussein spurned the offer. The potential for disruption was great, says Steve Kent, a private computer-security expert in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of a Pentagon advisory panel on defensive information warfare. "In the Gulf War the military made extensive use of the Internet for its communications, and it would have suffered had the Iraqis decided to take...