At the same time the market was melting down on CNBC, Andrea Mitchell was interviewing General David Petraeus on MSNBC. (Transcript).

She asked if it was inevitable that the terrorists were going to get one of their attacks to work, one of these days. That has an obvious answer: nobody has ever bats 1,000. None the less, Petraeus was tapdancing as fast as he could, trying to avoid answering the question, and Andrea Mitchell finally gave up.

In The Meanwhile

In the meanwhile, however, he was pointing out that one of the rules in the counterinsurgency manual is that you have to be an adaptive organization - keep changing what you're doing in order to keep the opposition off-balance. Al Queda is doing that, he said, and we are, too. He mentioned that the internet was being used by terrorists, and we need to step up our defense there.

So I got to thinking. Nobody is willing to admit to having fat fingers. Typing "billion" instead of "million" isn't an act that will live in infamy. It's the kind of inevitable error that will crop up every so often because nobody bats 1,000. But although fingers have pointed to CitiGroup, they're denying that they have any record of that.

Not Just P&G

And what's more, it wasn't just Procter and Gamble that fell through the floor. Accenture tumbled. Apple dropped. Boston Brewing, the people that make Sam Adams beer, fell to zero.

If nobody admits to having fat fingers by tonight, they're never going to admit to it. And that suggests that it wasn't fat fingers. It was misinformation, inserted into the system by a terrorist hacker.

It makes sense. They repeatedly attacked the World Trade Center because America's leading industry is capital formation. Attacking the stock markets directly, trying to cause a crash, is something that would make sense to them.

The Attack Failed

And even though it didn't work - the market dropped 700 points in 15 minutes, but regained 600 points in the next 20 - nobody is going to admit that the terrorists found a weakness in the systems that the capital markets run on. Terrorism isn't about destruction. That's sabotage. Terrorism is about causing fear. You can do that simply by popping a paper bag. Or in this case, making consumers fear for the safety of their investments and their pensions.

If we admit they were responsible, they win. It's better to let people think that the terrorists are a bunch of klutzes whose plots fail because they get spooked and leave the keys in the lock.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Al Queda - Andrea Mitchell - David Petraeus - fat finger - hackers - NYSE - Proctor & Gamble - terrorism