ED@MIT-MC.ARPA (Ed Schwalenberg) (12/10/85)
Ever read Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar? In any technological society, someone with a little smarts and a little imagination can cause unbelievable havoc if he tried. For example, anyone can buy a gun, drive up to Grand Coulee Dam, and shoot out 9 insulators, thereby turning off the largest power supply in the western world. It isn't hard, it isn't dangerous (at least if you don't get caught), and it requires several orders of magnitude less skill than manipulating microwaves. I agree with your basic theme, that designers must protect important systems against vandalism, but someone with the smarts and sophistication to pull off the kind of thing you're talking about could do much worse damage much more easily, expending his effort instead on thinking of new things to screw up. Hopefully the malevolent people in the world will continue to be dumb and unimaginative..