Blurb

Today, Western nations stand at a crossroads on their way to national security. Walking along the road much traveled by they would continue to prepare themselves for a war with a peer competitor by using recently developed Internet technologies to improve the performance of the systems they developed during the Cold War to fight the Soviet Union; along the road less traveled by, they would begin to prepare themselves for a completely new form of war, one that they will have to fight against the much weaker, but not thereby less ominous and determined, terrorist threat challenging them now.

The existence of this crossroads raises the important question as to which of these two paths nations should choose to follow. This book points out that, although the likely enemy is clearly lurking along the road less traveled by, the western nations have instead unexplainably chosen to follow the road much traveled by. In a critical appraisal of this wrong-headed decision, the author argues with implacable logic that this choice is not only counter to the lessons of history but will also have significantly destructive consequences.

The book makes an impassioned appeal for a return to the sanity of the original determination to follow the road less traveled by. The author takes us down this road and, with an exquisite perception for the essential detail, he describes the scenery one would encounter along the way. He highlights for the reader where and how information technology fits into that scenery, and then imaginatively prefigures the relative security that would await at the end of that road. Thus proving the wisdom of the poet:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost