Virginia Postrel observes:
So here’s the question: What happens when we find ourselves facing militant reactionaries who, for purely pragmatic reasons, are willing to use adaptable, decentralized organization and technologies against us? Unlike our Cold War adversaries, the militants who want to build an unchanging Islamicist world have no ideological dedication to central planning and control. They’re nimble, they’re transnational, they’re adaptable, they’re quick. And our defenses depend in large part on hypertrophied technocratic institutions — sluggish, highly bureaucratic, and driven as much by poltics as pragmatism. If we can’t respond by playing to our dynamist strengths, rather than our technocratic weaknesses, we’re doomed.