November 1999

It is not widely known that the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan are now at war. The battles are not being fought on land, however, or at sea, or even, strictly speaking, in the air; they take place in cyberspace, where nobody so far has ever died. The soldiers in this war are invisible figures buried deep inside government offices, “hacking” their way into computers on enemy territory. As soon as the Taiwanese president, Lee Teng-hui, announced, on July 9, that his country should be treated as a separate state, the battle was joined.