Foreign Policy has released its annual “Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2007.” Among the contenders:

1. The Cyberwars Have Begun. However, see Miriam Dunn Cavelty’s article “Cyberterrorism: Looming Threat or Phantom Menace” in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics.

2. US Navy is in Iraq for the Long Haul. And a good thing too, if trade in the Arabian Gulf is to be protected from the emerging threat of piracy, which is on the rise off the coast of Iraq and is already thriving in other areas of the world characterized by state failure. See the International Analyst Network for more.

3. Rifts Within Al-Qaeda Widening. But is this really news? The movement has always been less monolithic than it has been portrayed by the West.

4. And my favorite, we have evidently “entered” the era of robot warriors. According to FP:

“Although militaries have used robots for everything from minesweeping to defusing bombs, the new “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system”–or SWORDS–is different. For one, it’s packing heat: an M249 machine gun, to be exact. It can fire on a target from more than 3,000 feet away. So far, three of these $250,000 robots have been deployed to Iraq to conduct dangerous ground operations that would otherwise put soldiers’ lives at risk.”

Well, now we’re ready to crush the rebels! On to Planet Hoth!