Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the nation has increased its attention on cyber security as an important facet of national security and critical infrastructure vital to the functioning of the U.S. economy. The White House's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace states that “by 2002, our economy and national security are fully dependent upon information technology and the information infrastructure. A network of networks directly supports the operation of all sectors of our economy.”

Cyber security is also highlighted as an area critical to national security by the National Research Council's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. This point, though, has not been without contention, especially with regards to the threat posed by cyber terrorism. Washington Monthly editor Joshua Green maintains that a myth of cyber terrorism has been imagined or created by the current administration: “There is no such thing as cyber terrorism – no instance of anyone ever having been killed by a terrorist (or anyone else) using a computer. Nor is there compelling evidence that Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has resorted to computers for any sort of serious destructive activity.”

The recurring theme in this book is the question of private efficiencies resulting in public vulnerabilities. In no other critical infrastructure sector are vulnerabilities more publicly seen than in cyber systems, which include the logical and physical network of computers, servers, fiber optic cables, and other components that constitute the nation's information infrastructure.