A nation needs to know and determine what it is as much as it needs to know what it is not and what it does not want to be. Living as we do in a global world, however, where borders have grown fuzzier by the day, it is practically impossible to prevent the unregulated flow of ideas and alternative viewpoints.

Much of this readily available information and data, made accessible by the portable communicative architecture that everyone can afford nowadays, is of a benign and often useful nature. A generation ago, most of us would not know how to repair a car’s engine, cook a fancy dish or virtually visit exotic places in the world as we can and do today – via the Internet.

But this free flow of information also means that today one can simply turn to the Internet to learn how to make a home-made bomb, break into a secured building or fly to another part of the world to cause mayhem for whatever reason.

… The writer is an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.