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A review by tikitechie
The Perfect Weapon: How the Cyber Arms Race Set the World Afire by David E. Sanger
4.0
Good overview of how cyber weapons have been employed and have changed over the last ~15 years, and how the US is currently falling behind other nations that see the lower cost and deniability of cyber weapons as a useful arm of their military.
The book discusses some major milestones of nation state attacks over the last two decades, from the time the US opened Pandora’s Box by hacking and destroying Iran’s nuclear centrifuges to Russia’s role in recent election tampering. The author argues that since cyber attacks are essentially bloodless, it’s difficult for governments to galvanize public opinions about fighting back. Moreover, governmental secrecy around what cyber weapons capabilities the US might have means that there is no obvious deterrence by show of force.
Aging bureaucrats who try to understand cyber weapons in the same framework as a new Cold War nuclear arms race are missing the point— and other nations are quickly moving to increase their capabilities in a new world where cyberwarfare is an ongoing fact of life (and one that most people are utterly unaware of). The author closes by arguing that the US needs to completely restructure how it acknowledges and responds to nation state cyber threats, while private companies and individuals need to take basic protective steps to guard themselves and their online assets.
The book discusses some major milestones of nation state attacks over the last two decades, from the time the US opened Pandora’s Box by hacking and destroying Iran’s nuclear centrifuges to Russia’s role in recent election tampering. The author argues that since cyber attacks are essentially bloodless, it’s difficult for governments to galvanize public opinions about fighting back. Moreover, governmental secrecy around what cyber weapons capabilities the US might have means that there is no obvious deterrence by show of force.
Aging bureaucrats who try to understand cyber weapons in the same framework as a new Cold War nuclear arms race are missing the point— and other nations are quickly moving to increase their capabilities in a new world where cyberwarfare is an ongoing fact of life (and one that most people are utterly unaware of). The author closes by arguing that the US needs to completely restructure how it acknowledges and responds to nation state cyber threats, while private companies and individuals need to take basic protective steps to guard themselves and their online assets.