The recent resignation of CIA boss George Tenet has only highlighted what is, for many, the greatest political scandal of a generation: the failure of the US intelligence community to combat the threat posed by Islamic extremists and prevent the 9/11 attacks.

Despite heavy last-minute censorship by the CIA, Man and Machine is a revelatory insight into this secret world. Edward Ponderevo spent his life developing AnthroCyber™ TeleContol for linking humans and machines. He therefore has a unique vantage point from which to view the political, military,  and operational culture of this linkage in the post-Cold War climate. From Reagan to George W. Bush, Ponderevo provides a vivid personal and historical narrative on how human-machine interfaces struggled unsuccessfully against becoming an anorexic discipline, lost in the post-Cold War world. Afraid to take risks that might offend Washington politicos and European allies, gutted of the clandestine operators who knew how to run secret wars, exhausted from open-source whiplash, and demoralized by demonization and poor performance, human-machine interface engineers have simply become unable and unwilling "to get down and dirty to do the hard part to fight a real war on terrorism."

Peeling back the layers of secrecy, Ponderevo tells it straight, the good with the bad, in the hope the US is not destined to repeat the mistakes of yesterday out of mere ignorance, denial, or deception. As the military and intelligence communities retool for the challenges of the new millennium--particularly threats posed by terrorists and weapons of mass destructions--policymakers should pay heed to the strengths and weaknesses of the human-machine interfaces. The consequences of getting it wrong, as America witnessed, are devastating.

Edward Ponderevo is the president and founder of Forward Based Technology, Inc. FBT developed AnthroCyber™, a human-machine interface that allows weapons systems to be operated by operators logged on via the Internet. He lives in Seattle, WA.