The Perfect Weapon

Hardcover, 357 pages

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2018 by Crown.

ISBN:: 978-0-451-49789-5
OCLC Number:: 1038453249

(1 review)

The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend the 2016 U.S. election from interference by Russia, with Vladimir Putin drawing on the same playbook he used to destabilize Ukraine.

Moving from the White …

The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend the 2016 U.S. election from interference by Russia, with Vladimir Putin drawing on the same playbook he used to destabilize Ukraine.

Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target.

2 editions

[email protected] reviewed The Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger

An Amateur Effor from Someone Who Should Know Better

2 stars

This book is a mess. I can't tell if Sanger simply doesn't understand technical minutia or if his writing is so sloppy his explanations are useless - probably a bit of both.

The author repeatedly latches on to the most scandalous explanation of certain events, occasionally even acknowledging more mundane explanations are plausible and then proceeding to spend dozens of pages building up the more outlandish story. He extrapolates on scant details and builds complex theories on nothing other than pure speculation.

Further, many of his predictions on the future of cyberwar have simply proven incorrect in places like Ukraine. I can't necessarily fault Sanger for that - pretty much everyone in the information security community made the same forecasts - but nonetheless, they're wrong.

Go read Kim Zetter or Andy Greenberg.

Subjects

Cyberterrorism
Military surveillance
Terrorism
Prevention
Military intelligence