Although the network hash rate has skyrocketed since ASICs have come online, the security of the Bitcoin network has declined substantially when considering the comparatively low cost of gaining 51% hashing power.
In February, just prior to Avalon making their first shipment, the network hash rate was about 25-30 TH/s. The network was being secured primarily by inefficient and expensive GPUs and it would have been very unlikely for someone to build the infrastructure to attack the network. Perhaps not due to the cost of the hardware, but more likely the energy demands would make it next to impossible.
Cost of attacking the network at 30 TH/s prior to ASICs:
GPUs: 50,000 x 7950 @ $300 each = $15 million (add to this cost of power supplies, motherboards, memory...)
Energy consumption: 10,000,000+ watts
Cost of attacking the network today at 150 TH/s:
ASICs: 300 x BFL 500 GH/s @ $25,000 each = $7.5 million
Energy consumption: ~1,500,000 watts
So today it costs far less than half of what is did in February '13 to 51% the network while consuming only 15% of the energy.
We used to think it was prohibitively expensive for any entity to destroy the network, but nowadays it's very feasible. I'm quite concerned about this.