We're losing qualified men and women. We're having to lower our recruiting standards. We have staked our way of life on the use of information. We rely more and more on computer networks for the flow of essential information. Like electricity, we now take information infrastructures for granted.
Reliability breeds dependence, and dependence produces vulnerabilities.
Consider what such a disruption would have caused in Operation Desert Storm, where our information systems had to accommodate a communications volume of 100,000 electronic messages and 700,000 telephone calls a day. Seven years later, those figures would be far greater, and our reliance on computers is much greater as well. This year is the first since Ronald Reagan was elected President where I think we have to raise the alarm about our national survival.