The scale and random nature of the WikiLeaks affair exposes the weakening grip democratic governments have on their secrets, delivers another body blow to American prestige and reveals the vulnerability of databases to individuals with access and expertise.

These leaks will become a milestone in changing the operations of government and diplomacy. The point is they are driven by technological capability. The leaks occur because they can occur, not because of any political cause such as exposing corruption, ending the Vietnam War, fighting human rights abuses or bringing democracy to China.

As usual, the US occupies the forefront of change. But this is a double-edged status. The control functions of the US state are being undermined by a small, elusive and hi-tech WikiLeaks outfit headed by an Australian, Julian Assange, whose narcissism is barely disguised by his polemical recruitment of the ideology of free speech, the great American virtue.

If you want a reality check, read what the leaker, Bradley Manning, now in solitary confinement, said of his "unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week" for more than eight months: "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' . . . erase the music . . . then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing . . . [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history . . . Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in searchable format to the public . . . everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format . . . it's beautiful and it's horrifying."

Welcome to the new world of cyber insecurity. Welcome to the attack on government secrets precisely because they are secrets. The politicians, stranded by an event beyond their control, seem clueless. The Gillard government kept mumbling about illegality. The Obama administration wants to throw the book at WikiLeaks. But the politicians, ultimately, face a losing battle and the huge publicity Assange has generated gives him a cult status that guarantees more leakers will service WikiLeaks down the track.

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