There have been incidents where pirates hijacked ships only to take the operating manuals. Some ships have been set adrift without their crews with little regard at what damage might result.

One eco-terrorist scenario is that pirates-terrorists hijack an oil tanker and blow it up in international fishing grounds. Another, as my own research covers on my blog, http://www.huntoftheseawolves.net/blog, is that terrorists are interested in hijacking huge ships carrying natural gas and using them as weapons of mass destruction.

Pirates have, for the most part, been pushed out of Indonesia and the Malaaca Strait and taken up hijacking ships along Africa. But there are hundreds of attacks worldwide that go unreported because shipping companies don't want their insurance rates to increase.

Most Americans aren't aware of the danger pirates-terrorists represent and only become aware that something is terrible wrong when a U.S. crew is involved in an attack. Filipinos, Africans, Indians, Indonesians and many other nationalities are well aware of what is going on because their citizens crew the cargo ships that are being hijacked.

This is a problem that will affect the world's population.