The bleeding edge of terrorism is not technology, but the moral imagination. As William Saletan pointed out on Slate ("Frame Game: Unthinkable, Unstoppable," September 13) the attacks of September 11 did not require sophisticated technology. The terrorists did not use ballistic missiles or cunningly fabricated plastic guns. Their weapons were knives and box cutters; their missiles were our own commercial airliners. The crew and passengers of the first three airplanes did not resist the terrorists because no one could imagine that anyone would fly a plane into a skyscraper. The passengers of the fourth plane rushed their hijackers because they had been told about the World Trade Center. They had nothing to lose.

Terrorism's innovators (terror's entrepreneurs, as it were) push the limits of what is conceivable. They do so because defying moral expectations is in itself terrible, and because astounding us is their best guarantee of success. Next time they'll do something different.

But our response will be technological. To be sure, the Central Intelligence Agency's spooks will spend more on what they call "human intelligence." And the black operatives of the U.S. Special Operations Command will swell in number. But the attacks wrote a blank check for the proponents of the revolution in military affairs (RMA)--those defense theorists who have been urging the U.S. military to prepare for "asymmetrical warfare" by developing smaller, faster, and smarter technology. (See our cover story, "Military Revolution," August 1, www.redherring.com/mag/ 101/military.html, where, sadly, we predict that a major terrorist act would confirm RMA as U.S. military doctrine.)

On September 15, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a draft of the budget that, it says, will be required to fight President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. In it, the Pentagon describes a military buildup that will rival that of the Reagan administration. More, the increase in spending on technology is unprecedented. In the interim, the Pentagon has asked for more unmanned surveillance drones, more intelligence-gathering aircraft, better defenses against biological and chemical agents, and the speedy conversion of two nuclear submarines to carry and launch cruise missiles.

But law enforcement also has promised to deploy new security technologies. Already, there are heat, motion, and electrical detectors that can see through walls. There are neural networks that can recognize individual faces in a crowd (for example the 19 criminals that were fingered at the last Super Bowl). Biometric sensors can be used to confirm peoples' identities. Biometric "sniffers" can snort the air for the must of a terrorist's panic or adrenaline.

Security is the first right that a state must guarantee; but when do security measures begin to corrode the society they were meant to protect? Before September 11, many observers were already nervous about the collection and scrutiny of private information. Such fears must now be seen as a luxury of peace. The new security technologies are far more intrusive, and the potential for their abuse by the state is much greater. Only last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that heat detectors could not be used to spy into homes because home owners "had a reasonable expectation of privacy." But will the Court uphold its ruling under pressure from law enforcement?

Already, the U.S. government has moved with unseemly haste to enlist new technologies for expanded surveillance. On September 13, the Senate amended an appropriations bill to include what one sponsor called the "first legislative strike against terrorists": the bill allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use its DCS-1000 "Carnivore" device to wiretap the computer communications of anyone the bureau thinks might be relevant to a terrorist investigation.

One of the most dispiriting aspects of recent weeks has been listening to the very conservative intellectuals who for years denounced any regulation of business as an assault upon freedom. With ill-disguised glee, many have described how the war on terrorism will require the sacrifice of liberties.

In some measure, I understand them. The mind recoils at all of this: the doomed cargoes sobbing into their cell phones, the thousands of office workers oblivious at their desks, and the bestial, exultant crew swooping down at five miles a minute. This, it seems, will be the subject of our thoughts for who knows how long. But we must try to not be degraded by our griefs and fears: what greater victory for terrorism than if we willingly surrendered the rights of a free people? I keep thinking of a poem by W.H. Auden, "August for the People and Their Favourite Islands" (Faber and Faber, 1936). Written on the eve of the war against fascism, Auden gloomily noted that we ". . . all sway forward on the dangerous flood of history, which never sleeps or dies / And, held one moment, burns the hand." Write to jason@redherring.com.