And, as Bruce Sterling has argued for years, the fact that the Internet was designed to keep working in the midst of attack makes it more resilient that you'd suspect: take out the 80 or so nodes responsible for most of the traffic, and still 70% of the remaining nodes can communicate, even if at a reduced speed and connectivity. check it out.
Now if we can just get the government to work that well. sigh.
Thanks to erudito for the thought.