While it’s probably important for RIM to have some sort of plan to keep their image from tarnishing, you have to remember that there really is very little new under the sun - people have used technological innovation for good and ill for thousands of years, and they will probably continue to do so for years to come.

Andrea, your comment about the terrorists wishing to “kill 5,000″ reminded me of a recently thwarted assassination plot where two white supremacists had planned to kill 102 people: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3271895/White-supremacists-plotted-to-assassinate-Barack-Obama-in-top-hats-and-tails.html My point in bringing up this article is to show that a lot of terrorists’ plans are intentionally over-ambitious; it’s not just the violence that they want people to be afraid of, it’s what they want people to think they were capable of.

The way we handle business and make decisions after an attack is something we all need to deal with both as individuals and as a global community. We have to be intelligent in our decision making process, which includes deciphering over exposure from media to true threats. Obviously, the attacks in Mumbai and how we recover from them are deserving of attention. We can even track our recovery efforts on our Blackberries!

Does anyone doubt that Indian officials are currently considering methods for cellular communication blackout/control? I certainly would; limiting coordination during an attack increases one’s ability to stop it quickly and save lives. However, the same tools meant to control the dissidents in a population could easily be used to manipulate the masses. Another consideration is the non-discrimination of a communication blackout: it affects terrorists and hostages alike.

As for a terrorist’s motivation, I can only guess. However, given the popular definition for terrorism as ‘actions intended to instill terror in a populous’ the increasing speed of media coverage will act as an accelerant to such abhorrent actions. We’ve moved from a day for news to reach print to a few hours for television broadcast to mere minutes (seconds?) to post on Twitter. The impact - the terror - only increases as time to audience decreases.

I don’t know the answer to either of these questions. Yet, their affect on global hot-spots is something we must monitor as future business leaders if not just concerned members of humanity.

Regarding the Indian government handling this terrorist attack, they managed to greatly reduce the number of deaths if the terrorists had really planned for 5,000. The Indian government has not disclosed detail information regarding the terrorist’s goals. It will take a while for that to come out and when it does who knows how accurate it really is. My point is the Indian government was caught off guard by this attack. They managed to get it under control in a few days and root out the remaining terrorists. I was concerned about the OCOB MBA trip this summer when I first heard of this tragic event. Then I thought to my self how air travel security has improved in the United States and around the world since 9/11. I believe the Indian government will be able to learn from this event and their security will be better than it was before the attack. I am still looking forward to traveling to India this summer to get a taste of Indian culture and business.

I agree with Andrea that the Indian government needs to work on responding quickly and effectively to these acts of terror. This can be one way for all governments to combat terror.

Maybe, the world will begin to see terrorism as a global issue and “fight back” together. This is not to sound idealistic, but if everyone works together then maybe these terrorist groups cannot hide so easily.

One thing I thought was interesting in this post is that the Indian government has come under substantial attack for not stopping the terrorists at a faster pace yet the article “Indian official: Terrorists wanted to kill 5,000” infers that the terrorists were apprehended long before they reached their 5,000 person target. Whether this is true or whether this is an attempt to shake the blame from the government is up for debate.

The last thing I wanted to comment on was something touched on by Jason and heavily discussed in the post below: media sensationalism. The concept of thwarting terrorism by refusing to be terrorized comes full circle in this post. The terrorists were watching the world ‘freak out’ while they enacted their plan. Although it’s easy to say we could have made their attack unsuccessful by refusing to be terrorized, I don’t think that’s a realistic request. Unfortunately, for the people in Mumbai at the time, refusing to be scared is not only a ridiculous idea, it’s also somewhat dangerous. Along those same lines, I think there runs a fine line between continuing to visit India because not visiting would be giving into terrorism and not visiting India because it’s dangerous for us to be there until the government gets things under control. I’m not advocating either position but I don’t think we can all so quickly jump onto one bandwagon because otherwise terrorism would win. Terrorism is—unfortunately—naturally terrifying. Not being terrified of terrorism is kind of like going against nature.

This is also an example of how Twitter now breaks world news. Think back to what Dr. Hodge said about the Twitterer in China who broke the news to the world about the Sichuan earthquake, and did so well before the major networks could even pull out their maps to find where the Sichuan province is located.

The tragedy of Mumbai aside, there are also several business lessons here we can all learn from — the smart business managers and firms of today and tomorrow will learn how to make use of such social media, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, applicable blogs, etc., to their strategic advantage. Companies like Blackberry have also learned how their product can appear in the media in a negative way, and one lesson is to have a damage control team and plan in place that can effectively deal with such issues.