Disconnect is growing. Some young people seem hooked by computers, leading to uncertainty about boundaries between the real and the apparent. The Internet is rapidly becoming a vital part of society something that is central not simply to work, but also to our interactions with others. We've come to depend on something we don't understand. Most importantly, no institution is tasked to tackle this emerging threat to our society.

At the moment, it's just criminal networks that are busily engaging in attacks on secure networks. But inter-state cyber-warfare is potentially the most devastating weapon in 21st century warfare. Every keystroke entered assists the attacker, allowing them to direct attacks with precision.

In the early years of the 20th century, theorists prophesied that bombing would paralyse nations, destroying the will to fight. Although aerial attacks devastated city after city, they lacked the pin-point accuracy necessary to cripple an enemy's war effort. Airpower proponents claim the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 as one of the first occasions when bombing alone effectively broke the enemy's ''will to fight''; however, the point is that this was achieved by precision targeting. That's exactly what occurs in cyber-warfare.

Security of basic commerce such as banking transactions depends on the capacity of e-commerce developing safeguards. But for larger institutions ones that are critical to our functioning as a society, the issues are more significant. What would happen, for example, if energy supply was interrupted or billing records were destroyed? Could you shop without your credit card and eftpos? How long could we survive, as a society, without electronic communications?

Nearly two hundred years ago, Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz grappled with the idea of ''war''. Just a couple of decades after the French Revolution, he asked the basic question: what is war all about? Before 1789, wars were begun by greedy princes, jealously eying off their neighbours domains and wondering how they could add an extra province or two to their kingdoms. By 1813, although ''Germany'' was still divided into a mess of principalities and duchies, the idea of a nation (people, or volk) had finally begun to take hold. Within a century it had become a political reality. In the middle of this intellectual ferment Clausewitz developed his greatest insight: that war is simply the continuation of politics by other means. His book, On War, is a dialectic he's always arguing with himself and he never produced a final version of his theories. However, an insight we can draw is that nothing is static; the exact form conflict takes is changing all the time.

Criminal activity is only a small part of the threat. Other countries are developing offensive internet warfare capabilities. These now offer the possibility of paralysing another nation without a shot being fired.

Our Defence Force keep our borders secure by deploying force to protect our shores from an invader. This means we can live safely and allows us to interact in a community. Over the past decade, the importance of the Internet has grown exponentially as a social structure. But the Internet is like a highway coming directly to our living rooms, bringing threats with it. The time has come to ensure that the vital elements of the Net are properly defended just as we expect our government to protect other infrastructure like ports and roads.

The recent Defence White Paper foreshadowed the need to develop new capacities to meet future challenges as warfare evolves. Clausewitz successfully attempted to understand the new dimensions of conflict in his time. We need to do the same. Other countries are developing offensive abilities. We need to develop some basic defensive measures. Quickly. Because otherwise, the home front may be defeated in the first battle of the next war.

Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.