We have long maintained a policy of not yielding to terrorists, and outsourcing ransom payments does not change the implications of this decision. Darkside and other cyber terrorists now know they not only can succeed but can do so surprisingly quickly. Indeed, ransomware has been profitably used around the world for years with businesses. This incident, though, was different. It was designed to cause widespread social and political havoc among our population. If the Biden administration did not want to pay terrorists, it could have used a wide array of powers to pressure Colonial not to pay. Colonial is tied into our infrastructure and largely exists by the grace of federal and state agencies. If President Biden declared publicly that the company should not yield to terrorists, he would have presented no less of an existential threat to the company than Darkside did. It may be true that the Biden administration concluded we are defenseless to cyber terrorism despite years of ransomware attacks and hundreds of billions of dollars in cyber security programs. If that is the case, the public should be informed. The failure of Congress and our government to defend against such terror attacks is a national security failure of breathtaking proportions. The Colonial Pipeline attack was the cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. In both cases, we were caught unprepared and unable to deal with a threat we knew was coming. Yet, President Roosevelt did not issue a “no comment” on the critical facts after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Back then, we believed FDR when he stated in his first inauguration that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."