The year started badly with January's , widely blamed on the Chinese. The fallout was as considerable, with some EU governments . Hillary Clinton about cybersecurity-as-geopolitics.

Uncomfortably, the US was also at the centre of April's disturbing 'Collateral Murder' video, who turned out to be unarmed civilians and journalists.

Shocking vrit video has been on YouTube many times, but this video was different, having been prized from the encrypted vaults of the US military by an insider, who sent it to Wikileaks. The whistleblower followed this up with the and finally and the US diplomatic cables.

Our prediction: the US government will not enjoy 2011 any more than Julian Assange. in case retaliation got out of hand.

Piling humiliation on disaster, we learned that the . Meanwhile, after installing Trojans on the restaurant's computer systems.