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THE WANING
OF THE STATE AND THE WAXING OF CYBERWORLD - Richard Falk
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 "SOFT POWER" VERSUS
" SOFT TARGETS"
II. The emergence of a race between
"soft power" and "soft targets":
This concern has been discussed earlier in relation to the Gulf War. IT greatly
enhances the role of brainpower in relation to firepower as an ingredient of geopolitical
influence. Information, and its controlled use, becomes the basis of a new geopolitical
strategy that reconfigures and sustains the relations of strong and weak, rich and poor.
Such stabilization is reinforced by the current worldwide acceptance of neo-liberal
approaches to trade, investment, and economic policy.
But this form of soft power also presents soft targets for adversaries that experience
deprivation and subordination. Whether these soft targets can be protected from
determined, skilled hackers with terrorist or conspiratorial goals is far from assured.
The nature of the challenge was rather vividly, if in an excessively Hollywood mode,
depicted in the movie "The Net," with the aspiring tyrant bearing some shadowy
resemblance to Bill Gates.
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