Maritime piracy, a phenomenon which has plagued free maritime trade for thousands of years, has entered a new age of sophistication and global reverberation. These acts of illegal criminal activity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries yield a significant profit margin for the perpetrators while creating considerable cost for ransom payments, security measures, capital, and human life. The classification of maritime pirates, as either criminals hoping to gain financial income or terrorists hoping to usher in political change, is warranted and compelling. If maritime pirates conduct their operations to institute political change, it is possible that flags of the United States and its allies can be more susceptible to pirate attacks than others. The author argues that although the definitional separation of "maritime piracy" and "terrorism" is becoming increasingly blurred in the twenty-first century, pirates will attack ships based on convenience and opportunity rather than based on the flags of vessels. Testing of this theory will be based on quantitative data produced by the International Maritime Bureau to test pirates’ ideologies as a variable. To test if deprivation is a variable to consider, the author will also compare Indonesian economic performance with the frequency of attempted pirate attacks off its waters.