The stock brokerage community is largely unprepared to manage the results of a disaster with a scope as great as the 11 September attacks. The community's organization and geographic concentration make it vulnerable and constrain the self-defensive actions needed to keep it functioning after another catastrophe. What stock brokerage lacks is a method to keep the system operating no matter what.
David Stephenson argues that the Office of Homeland Security should be take advantage of the fundamental characteristics of internet technologies - their ability to empower individuals, to close the loop and to link everything - to combat terrorism.