Retrieve The Perfect Weapon How The Cyber Arms Race Set The World Afire Formulated By David E. Sanger Expressed As File

Sanger is simply the best writer alive working on issues of global and American security and his latest book proves how far ahead he is of everyone else in his field His meticulous reporting and cogent analysis of where cyber warfare is headed makes an urgent argument for international standards a digital Geneva Convention is mentioned to be discussed and adopted with haste From the Iranian centrifuge sabotage to Russian hacking of Ukrainian power systems and American election tampering Sanger exposes how little understood these new capabilities are and makes a powerful case that this confusion could lead us to a very dangerous place THE PERFECT WEAPON is a gripping insightful read that I can't recommend enough Philip Graham is credited with calling journalism the first rough draft of history The author of The Perfect Weapon David E Sanger one of the highly respected journalists for the New York Times called his book current history I am going with a 'polished second draft of history'As a daily reader of The Times I already had some familiarity with the topics covered in Mr Sanger's book However that reading did not prepare me for what I learned from the depth of research and clarity of writing presented by Mr Sanger in each chapter And it's all here Iran's nuclear centrifuges blowing up North Korean missiles falling out of the sky China's remarkable and frightening rise of power in cyberspace the Russian influence in theelection and a United States president that is utterly clueless in regard to cybersecurity but still able to spout utter nonsense when asked to discuss our current cyberageMr Sanger used two words in his subtitle that stand out most to me after finishing his book War and Fear Although Mr Sanger didn't actually state that we're in an ongoing cyberwar I believe we are and to borrow from the heading of the final chapter the ongoing cyberwar is 'just left of conventional war'The fear or fears are first most Americans including myself are blissfully unaware of the ongoing war until we're struck by the digital euivalent of shrapnel that inflicts permanent damage on our lives The second fear the knowledge that there is a subset of Americans actively and gleefully consciously and unconsciously aiding and abetting the same cyberwar enemies that our country is fighting against This is a must read book in my

opinion I also recommend checking out Lights Out A Cyberattack A Nation Unprepared Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel LikeWar The Weaponization of Social Media by PW Singer and ET Brooking and Click Here to Kill Everybody Security and Survival in a Hyper Connected World by Bruce Schreiner How to the laws of war apply to cyber That is the uestion Why not just manipulate North Korea's missile launches software prior to launch and thereby plunging them into the sea shortly after takeoff Well that would amount to preemptive war in violation of international law So when Sanger seeks information about those failures at the Pentagon he's met with stony silence Yet cyber manipulation has happened before namely when the US and Israel caused Iran's nuclear centrifuges to whirl off into destructive spins Indeed cyber is indeed a part of any future war one country's ability to plunge another into utter darkness so fast that retaliation is impossible In many ways the US has been asleep to realities of cyber intrusions and hacks Bureaucratic infighting Chinese stealing our intellectual property silly And what about Russian intrusions in into our election processes Clear straightforward news reporting narrative Overall message Wake Up r e v i e w “As we put autonomous cars on the road connect Alexas to our homes put ill protected Internet connected videos cameras and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones our vulnerabilities expand exponentially” David E SangerThe Perfect Weapon is an absolutely terrifying piece of literature which delves deeply into the rise of cyber warfare and how it has altered the lines of geopolitics world economy and even the everyday lives of civilians Sanger largely focusses on the “Seven Sisters” of cyber conflict The United States Russia China Britain Iran Israel and North Korea how cyber conflict has expanded since the revelation of the AmericanIsraeli attacks on Irans nuclear program He explores how great and small powers alike have moved into a new era of constant sabotage misinformation and fear in which everyone is a target The message is alarming Rarely in human history has a new weapon been adapted with such speed customised to fit so many different tasks and exploited by so many nations to reshape their influence on global affairs Sanger writes He goes on that cyber weapons have the capability to fry power grids stop trains silence cell phones and overwhelm the internetIf these doomsday scenarios are the future the future is now It is well known that the US and Israel planted a computer virus known by the code name Stuxnet into Iran's nuclear facilities causing centrifuges to spin out of control and setting back its nuclear program for years Russia resorted to cyber war in Ukraine as part of its conventional invasion And of course Russia used cyber weapons to influence theUS Presidential elections as well as the Brexit vote And this is just the tip of the iceberg covered by David Sanger North Koreas attack on Sony Pictures just to prove its point or her swindling of nearly a billion dollars from Bangladesh it felt like I was reading of a sci fi thriller The fact that privacy is a myth and no one is exonerated from the clutches of cyber war is far than chilling Whilst the book mostly covers about the clashes between the US and other governments the reality that the lives of civilians are at stake as collateral is shocking and scary The technological advancement in cyber warfare has improved so much that missiles can be disabled even before they can be fired The personal e mails chats and files exchanged which are supposedly “encrypted” and “secure” are not as secure as it is claimedWe are aware of the kind of traditional warfare where countries go to war at the borders with their guns blazing Civilians are seldom directly involved uite recently when the Chinese soldiers intruded across Indian borders which later led to a bloodbath we were uite comfortably watching the news of Amitabh Bachchan being tested positive for COVIDThis safe haven doesnt exist in the realm of cyber warfare It is the scenario where our most intimate secrets that are safely locked and hidden in our mobile phones laptops or hard disks et al can be easily erased or worse stolen The power supply to our homes be cut or our bank accounts can be emptied It would take months to just figure out who the perpetrator was and almost impossible to undo the damages In this new and expanding form of warfare the civilians are the inevitable collateral damage The book was well paced and the language used was crisp reflecting that Sanger has worked for three decades at The New York Times “In thest century we have seen a toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace Wars are no longer declared and having begun proceed according to an unfamiliar template” says David E SangerIs this book relevant to all After reading I have covered the camera of my laptop with a tape strengthened my passwords and thoroughly assessed the permissions granted to various apps in my phone Thats what The Perfect Weapon made me cynical cautious and importantly aware about the dark reality of the digital world The book is easily one of most thrilling and terrifying non fiction books I have ever come acrossRatingRussia and China have penetrated so deeply into the electronic systems that sustain the American economy that either country might be able to set us back two or three decades using cyber weapons North Korea and Iran appear to be not far behind What seems to be stopping them all is the eual or greater ability of the United States to do the same or worse to themnot to mention the chance we might reduce their countries to cinders with nuclear weapons That's the message at the heart of David E Sanger's chilling new book The Perfect Weapon Great power competitionnot terrorismis now the primary focus on US national security he writes And that competition is increasingly playing out onlineThe US government has been slow on the uptake to acknowledge this threat Inthe intelligence community's annual worldwide threat assessment delivered to Congress did not even include cyber weapons on the list At that point both Russia and China had been building their cyber capabilities for years Now of course attitudes have changed The United States Cyber Command created inwas upgraded only ininto a Unified Combatant Command one of ten in the US armed forces Cyber Command is headuartered at Fort Meade along with the National Security Agency and is commanded by the agency's director Together NSA and Cyber Command house both our country's offensive and defensive cyber operations Sanger explains that the two organizations work together uneasily Their priorities are sometimes at cross purposesExcessive caution about the threat of cyber weaponsDavid Sanger is extraordinarily well connected in Washington He has been writing on foreign policy globalization nuclear proliferation and the presidency for than thirty years for the New York Times He has been the paper's Chief Washington Correspondent sinceThroughout The Perfect Weapon he cites one on one conversations with nearly all the major players in the drama he describes And drama it is This book details the bureaucratic turf wars foot dragging incompetence and excessive caution that has so often characterized America's inadeuate response to the threat posed by cyber weaponsThe dilemma Sanger describes is worrisome America's offensive cyber prowess has so outpaced our defense that officials hesitate to strike back he writes Although American companies and government are penetrated online thousands of times every day the government has rarely spoken out to denounce those responsible Partly this is because it may take days weeks or even months to assemble definitive proof about who launched a given attack But it's also because officials in the CIA NSA Pentagon and White House are unwilling for our adversaries to gain any insight into how we obtained the information Even when we know perfectly well who's responsible they decline to speak out Simply citing specific evidence could reveal the existence of American or Allied implants in their computer systems Like many of the top former officials he interviewed Sanger regards that reluctance to show our cards as an errorThe US has only rarely activated cyber weaponsUnless the government can accuse an adversary in public it's hampered from retaliating The upshot is that the US has only rarely activated cyber weapons so far as we know The most notable exceptions were the Stuxnet attack on Iran's nuclear production facilities incarried out jointly with Israel and the attack on North Korea's launch systems that caused its missiles to explode or fall into the sea However Russia has not hesitated to attack weaker nations chiefly Ukraine and Estonia as well as both the United States and Western EuropeAs Sanger points out there are ways however inadeuate that the United States might combat a nuclear attack There is always a warning even if it's measured only in minutes With cyber weapons however there is no warning And In almost every classified Pentagon scenario for how a future confrontation with Russia and China even Iran and North Korea might play out the adversary's first strike against the United States would include a cyber barrage aimed at civilians And the threat isn't limited to those four hostile countries A decade ago Sanger notes there were three or four nations with effective cyber forces now there are than thirty Now we face the proliferation of cyber weapons not just nuclear devicesAbout the authorDavid E Sanger has written two books on American foreign policy as well as The Perfect Weapon his most recent work He is the Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times This is an excellent and terrifying read The Russians and Chinese and North Koreans are in the house and it seems that this administration is not at all aware of the magnitude of the threat Sanger has a lot of access and a depth of knowledge on the issues and this history He's also an excellent writer I do have some critiues he seems to think that the olympic games project where the US and Israel hacked into the Iranian computer networks was completely justified though he worries about its effects I'm not so sure Seems a bit sanctimonious to say when we did it it was totally responsible and justified Now that everyone else is doing it it's not.