Winn Schwartau
American writer who warned Congress about an "electronic Pearl Harbor" in 1991 and then wrote the book on information warfare.
Schwartau came to security from audio engineering and consulting rather than academia. Testifying before Congress in 1991, he described how society's dependence on computers left it open to a coordinated attack, and the phrase "electronic Pearl Harbor" stuck. The same year saw his novel Terminal Compromise, which he later released for free online.
Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway followed in 1994, one of the first popular books to treat networks as a battlefield. The rhetoric has been criticised as alarmist, and the great digital surprise attack has yet to arrive on schedule. But the questions he raised about power grids, banks and critical infrastructure are now permanent line items in every defence budget.