In spite of the Territory's special status, the Dutch company FUGRO NV, among others, had agreed to carry out a seismic survey on behalf of Kerr McGee, a United States company, which, in conjunction with the French company Total Fina Elf, had acquired a licence from the Kingdom of Morocco in October 2001.

Kerr described what he called supply chain attacks in which hackers not only steal proprietary information, but go further and insert erroneous data and programs in communications hardware and software Trojan horses that can be used to bring down systems. All governments will find themselves exposed to a new type of threat that will be difficult to counter.

That job will not be easy, because much of the relevant infrastructure is not under direct government control. Just recently, Donald Kerr, the US deputy director of national intelligence, warned that major losses of information and value for our government programs typically aren t from spies....In fact, one of the great concerns I have is that so much of the new capabilities that we re all going to depend on aren t any longer developed in government labs under government contract.