September Terrorist Attacks (11,) (2001 ): Impact on E-Commerce - Immediate Effects, Transforming E-commerce, E-commerce Vs. Security?

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., it was common for social and political commentators to proclaim that "everything has changed." While the geopolitical and domestic landscape transformed in accordance with this pronouncement, the business world weighed up the implications of this changed environment for the future of e-commerce. Situating the terrorist attacks in the midst of a global economy heading into recession and an Internet economy still dusting itself off from the dot.com shakeout of 2000, analysts saw several different short-term and long-term scenarios for e-commerce. The very novelty of the situation—an attack on U.S. soil, the subsequent anthrax attacks and the fear and uncertainty they created—contributed to the problem facing analysts in trying to sketch out a clear forecast for the impact of the attacks. Since these kinds of horrors had never before visited the American public, it was difficult to gauge exactly how people would react.