By Stephen Starr, The Guardian

With just 5 million people, Ireland ranks sixth globally for foreign direct investment in US, above Italy and Mexico

More than 80 years since helping develop the nuclear bomb, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the mountains of eastern Tennessee remains a critical piece of the US government’s research-and-development infrastructure.

Inside its walls lie the world’s fastest supercomputer; fusion, fission and neutron research projects; and thousands of expert scientists and researchers.

While keeping out hostiles and spies in the 1940s was a fairly one-dimensional task by modern standards, now, in a world of perpetual cyber-attacks, the online threat to places such as this has been amplified immensely.

Cybercrime could cost the global economy more than $23tn by 2027. The average cost of a data breach for a company in the US stands at more than $9m. For the federal government, whose enemies are far and wide, the stakes go far beyond money.

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