In 1988, at one of his last press conferences, President Reagan was asked what he thought was the most pressing international problem, and, after going through a laundry list of threats, he ended on a hopeful, if somewhat apocalyptic note: ‘I've often wondered what if all of is in the world discovered that we were threatened by a power from outer space – from another planet. Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all – we were all human beings, citizens of the world – wouldn't we come together to fight that particular threat?' Whether the owl of Minerva flies at dusk - or with the arrival of the first alien spaceship - the concept of Global security emerges from the appearance of global threats. But it takes more than a threat to bring about a global acceptance of the need for a new conception of security. The prospect of a nuclear holocaust was a powerful reason for globalizing the concept of security; but so too was the first earthrise image taken by Apollo 8, which helped visualize the vulnerability of an entire planet. Fueled as well by economic globalization and an information revolution, peace, environmental, and, ironically, anti-globalization movements have put their own stamp on global security. No less a factor has been the spread of a global popular culture, spawned in Hollywood , mirrored in Bollywood, and digitally transported by a revolution begun in Silicon Valley . And then came 9/11 and the ‘Global War on Terror'. In a 2002 speech to graduating cadets at West Point, President Bush declared: ‘ The gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous crossroads of radicalism and technology…We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. We will lift this dark threat from our country and from the world.' When the ‘Digital Age' and the ‘Age of Terror' converge, what are the prospects for global security?