These viral routers were everywhere. It was just a matter of time before all the routers were affected (or actually infected with the viral microcode).
It was not just the US that was using technology for just about everything. The whole world was using the Internet for their business. The US economy. The European market. National and International banking. Control of oil platforms was centralized. Oil tankers. Cruise ships. The Concorde (well, until it was grounded due to that big crash in 2000). Global Positioning Satellites. Power production. Food distribution. Trucking companies. Manufacturing. The electric grid. Medical drugs production and delivery.
Everyone is using the Net technology to communicate with everyone else. Business sending data from one place to another. Money transfers. Medical data. Drug dealers. Money laundering. Construction data.
The data is moving everywhere. Daytime and nighttime. Weekdays and weekends. Every single second, tons of data is moving through the system.
And "they" can stop it any time they want. And they are going to. At the time, I seemed to be the only one on the outside that knew about it.