It is not bin Laden but Al Qaeda that turns out to be unkillable. Before 9/11, Al Qaeda was a hierarchical body with a central command and, in Afghanistan, a country of its very own. Now it has neither country nor command, and a new, diffuse and decentralized organization has taken its place — "Al Qaeda 2.0," as Peter Bergen calls it. This new Al Qaeda is, if not "virtual," then at least a-geographic.

Cyberspace, however, presents a unique set of governance problems that amount to a difference in kind rather than degree. The Internet is inherently international; regardless of where it is located, every website can be accessed instantaneously by every connected computer. Distance and space have become irrelevant. Content aside, it is almost meaningless to refer to a website as national or local.

Second, the Internet is one of the few modern institutions that is not organized geographically. Despite the numerous attempts to impose geographic boundaries and jurisdiction upon it, cyberspace exists as a primordial networked form of organization. While a country or a region can certainly disconnect from the Internet, once it is connected borders become virtually irrelevant. Many of the issues discussed in this paper entail attempts to impose a system of territorial sovereignty on an a-geographic network. Thus, as noted above, geography and territorial jurisdiction do not map on cyberspace.