Perhaps the Islamists don’t need to be martyrs anymore. What with instructions to Jihadists to start forest fires in dry areas and a belief that the fires in Greece were deliberately started and the attacks on the internet by jihadist cyber warriors who needs a bomb?

The CIA has launched a major hunt for international computer hackers who are threatening to throw cities into chaos by sabotaging their electricity supplies. In a shock announcement last night the American spy agency said that the hackers were running a massive extortion plot.

They are threatening to cut off city lighting and power supplies unless they are paid huge sums of ransom money.

And according to senior CIA analyst Tom Donahue the hackers have already proven that they can disrupt the utilities by causing blackouts in several cities outside the US.

What’s that got to do with Islamist terrorists you may ask. Because it could be the next thing, they will have the ways and means, and it will cause huge disruption with little chance of detection. Oh and also:

“We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

The cyber power attacks, revealed for the first time by Mr Donahue, have particularly alarmed the White House.

Members of the Bush administration believe that highly skilled terrorist hackers may now follow the extortionists’ lead and try to disable power, water and chemical plants in the US and Western Europe.

As the Chinese would say “may you live in interesting times” We certainly do. Too interesting if you ask me.

(cross posted with CommonSense)