Apart from his views on the first Gulf War nothing has made Baudrillard more notorious than his outspoken writings on the 9/11 events in the USA, not even him turning his back on the New York art world in the 1990s. Baudrillard saw 9/11 as the end of the ‘event strike’ of the 1990s where world events like the soccer World Cup or Diana's death had occurred but nothing which challenged ‘globalisation’. The extract here was originally Baudrillard's spoken contribution, later written up with slight alterations, to a debate in New York about the 9/11 events. The debate included, among others, the Althusserian theorist Jacques Ranciere and was mainly conducted in French. It was broadcast by France Culture on 23 February 2002, six months after 9/11 at a time when anti-French propaganda in the US was still high as a result of France's perceived lack of support for America in the so-called ‘war on terror’. Verso books published the written piece in translation by Chris Turner as part of the book The Spirit of Terrorism in 2002 and then expanded the volume with two more essays in a second edition in 2003. The original book was published in 2002 as part of a three-book mini series by Verso on 9/11 which also included books by Slavoj Žižek and Paul Virilio.