Consider what a real-life computer Kaczynski, who did mean it, could conceivably do with just a laptop, if he could pick his way into government databases.Such could be the battleground of the next world war. It could also be where the anarchist takes revenge on the system. The literal Greek meaning of anarchy is “absence of government”. Today we don’t have grand left-right alliances, for the simple reason that in practice they already exist.

In Germany, Italy and France, the left has grudgingly acknowledged “the triumph of the market” and is shifting towards the centre. In Britain, where Blairism is Thatcherism with a more human face (and there are those who would dispute that distinction), it already has.Everywhere, ideological distinctions are of nuance, not of principle. Look where he will, the old believer sees nothing but trouble: on one side, an unforgiving market subject to no man’s laws; on another, a government which can eavesdrop on his phone calls and track his every footstep; and finally a political system which offers no real outlet for his grievances. No matter whether you edge towards anarchism from the aggrieved left (the European tradition) or right (the American way, via the myriad of militias, cults and semi-sane individuals who see all government as a Satanic conspiracy), you’re not short of motives.Nor is there any shortage of means.

The paradox is that although the modern state is hugely powerful, it is also uniquely vulnerable. Indeed, not since Tsarist Russia perhaps has the anarchist, in theory, had such opportunity to wreak disruption. Then that opportunity lay in the sheer concentration of power in the hands of one man; kill the king and you would incapacitate the state. Now it resides in the very reliance of government on the sophisticated systems from which its enhanced power stems.