What if terrorism's global operating system has evolved into a much more sophisticated nexus — untraceable state sponsorship acting in concert with highly intelligent, well-trained, and carefully chosen foot soldiers who Western analysts would never conceive as partners? What if its new operating software is like the AIDS virus, constantly mutating from one nameless, faceless protocol address to another, transmitting its deadly code without need for regeneration or further direction, and with the necessary but well-camouflaged logistical and planning support states can offer?

Imagine that a state seeking to redress strategic imbalances in the quantifiable military threats it faces from larger powers trains a new, heretofore completely unknown battery of terror masters. They move as businessmen and women, as mothers with families, as low-level functionaries in embassies — in short, as people not worthy of intelligence monitoring by the West's traditional antiterror infrastructure...

...Once willing local proxies are identified, they are injected with a viral code of highly specific intelligence data about potential targets, methods of attack, how to assemble and deploy locally the weapons required to carry out their deadly missions and a philosophically sustaining message from the messianic figures who inspire them from afar.

The foreign agent then disappears, untraceable and unlikely to ever be seen again in the infected environment, or to even be used by the state sponsor for future missions...