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Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War Hardcover – March 1, 2016

4.4 out of 5 stars 1,014 ratings

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“A consistently eye-opening history...not just a page-turner but consistently surprising.” —The New York Times

“A book that grips, informs, and alarms, finely researched and lucidly related.” —John le Carré

As cyber-attacks dominate front-page news, as hackers join terrorists on the list of global threats, and as top generals warn of a coming cyber war, few books are more timely and enlightening than
Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, by Slate columnist and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Fred Kaplan.

Kaplan probes the inner corridors of the National Security Agency, the beyond-top-secret cyber units in the Pentagon, the "information warfare" squads of the military services, and the national security debates in the White House, to tell this never-before-told story of the officers, policymakers, scientists, and spies who devised this new form of warfare and who have been planning—and (more often than people know) fighting—these wars for decades.

From the 1991 Gulf War to conflicts in Haiti, Serbia, Syria, the former Soviet republics, Iraq, and Iran, where cyber warfare played a significant role,
Dark Territory chronicles, in fascinating detail, a little-known past that shines an unsettling light on our future.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A consistently eye-opening history of our government’s efforts to effectively manage our national security in the face of the largely open global communications network established by the World Wide Web. . . . The great strengths of Dark Territory . . . are the depth of its reporting and the breadth of its ambition. . . . The result is not just a page-turner but consistently surprising. . . . One of the most important themes that emerges from Mr. Kaplan’s nuanced narrative is the extent to which defense and offense are very much two sides of the same coin. . . . The biggest surprise of Dark Territory is the identity of the most prominent domestic heroes and villains in the “secret history.” . . . Dark Territory is the rare tome that leaves the reader feeling generally good about their civilian and military leadership.” ― The New York Times

“Comprehensively reported history . . . The book’s central question is how should we think about war, retaliation, and defense when our technologically advanced reliance on computers is also our greatest vulnerability?” ―
The New Yorker

“A book that grips, informs and alarms, finely researched and lucidly related.” -- John le Carré

Dark Territory captures the troubling but engrossing narrative of America’s struggle to both exploit the opportunities and defend against the risks of a new era of global cyber-insecurity. Assiduously and industriously reported. . . . Kaplan recapitulates one hack after another, building a portrait of bewildering systemic insecurity in the cyber domain. . . . One of the deep insights of Dark Territory is the historical understanding by both theorists and practitioners that cybersecurity is a dynamic game of offense and defense, each function oscillating in perpetual competition.” ― The Washington Post

“An important, disturbing, and gripping history arguing convincingly that, as of 2015, no defense exists against a resourceful cyberattack.” ―
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"
Dark Territory offers thrilling insights into high-level politics, eccentric computer hackers and information warfare. In 15 chapters—some of them named after classified codenames and official (and unofficial) hacking exercises—Kaplan has encapsulated the past, present and future of cyber war." ― The Financial Express

“The best account to date of the history of cyber war…a human story: a history as revealed by the people involved in shaping it…full of detail, including information that will be new even to insiders.” ―
The Times Literary Supplement

“Kaplan dives into a topic which could end up being just as transformational to national security affairs as the nuclear age was. The book opens fast and builds from there, providing insights from research that even professionals directly involved in cyber operations will not have gleaned. . . . You will love this book.” -- Bob Gourley ―
CTOvision.com

“The best available history of the U.S. government’s secret use of both cyber spying, and efforts to use its computer prowess for more aggressive attacks. . . . Contains a number of fascinating, little-known stories about the National Security Agency and other secret units of the U.S. military and intelligence community. . . . An especially valuable addition to the debate.” -- John Sipher ―
Lawfare

“Fascinating . . . To understand how deeply we have drifted into legally and politically uncharted waters, read Kaplan’s new book,
Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.” -- George F. Will ― The Washington Post

“Deeply sourced. Luckily, he’s not slavishly loyal to his sources.” ―
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

EDITORS' CHOICE ―
New York Times Book Review

"Fred Kaplan’s Dark Territory may become a classic reference for scholars and students seeking to understand the complicated people who ushered the United States into the cyber-conflict era and the tough decisions they made." -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, Director, Center for Cyber Conflict, US Naval War College ―
Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute

“Chilling . . . Kaplan is one of America’s leading writers on national security, and his accounts of cyberattacks are gripping . . . assiduously researched.” -- Edward Lucas ―
The Times (London)

“Peppered with many fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes . . . A readable and informative history.” -- P.W. Singer ―
The New York Times Book Review

A “Hot Type” Book Pick for March 2016 ―
Vanity Fair

A “Hot Tech Book of 2016” ―
Tech Republic

“Worthy of any spy thriller. . . a strong narrative flow . . . impressivelydetailed . . . deeplyrelevant . . . vital.” ―
The National (UAE)

“Jarring . . . a rich, behind-the-headlines history of our government’s efforts to make policy for the jaw-dropping vulnerabilities of our ever-increasing dependence on computers. . . . Kaplan renders a vivid account of the long struggle waged by presidents, bureaucrats, generals, private-sector CEOs, and privacy advocates . . . Kaplan enjoys considerable credibility in defense circles, but he guides us through the dark territory of cyber conflict with an omniscient-narrator voice reminiscent of Bob Woodward’s behind-the-scenes books. . . . Today, Kaplan argues, it is precisely U.S. pre-eminence in the network connectivity that makes us the most vulnerable target in the world to cyber sabotage.” ―
Washington Independent Review of Books

“Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Fred Kaplan’s taut, urgent history traces the dual trajectory of digital surveillance and intervention, and high-level US policy from the 1980s on.” ―
NATURE

Dark Territory is a remarkable piece of reporting. Fred Kaplan has illuminated not merely the profound vulnerabilities of our nation to cyber warfare, but why it has taken so long for our policy-makers to translate indifference into concern and concern into action. This is a vitally important book by a meticulous journalist.” -- Ted Koppel, author of Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath

“A fascinating account of the people and organizations leading the way towards a cyber war future.” -- Dorothy E. Denning, author of Information Warfare and Security, 1st Inductee, National Cyber Security Hall of Fame

“Everyone has heard the term 'cyber warfare.' Very few people could explain exactly what it means and why it matters.
Dark Territory solves that problem with an account that is both fascinating and authoritative. Fred Kaplan has put the people, the technologies, the dramatic turning points, and the strategic and economic stakes together in a way no author has done before.” -- James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic

“Revealing. . . . On a vital current-events topic, the well-connected Kaplan’s well-sourced history gives readers much to ponder.” ―
Booklist

“Chilling” ―
Haaretz

“A very in-depth work... its content is enlightening and intelligent and the secrets it uncovers are astounding.” ―
The News Hub

Praise for The Insurgents:

“Thrilling reading . . . A fascinating history . . . The Insurgents proceeds like a whodunit . . . An authoritative, gripping and somewhat terrifying account of how the American military approached two major wars in the combustible Islamic world . . . There is no one better equipped to tell the story than Fred Kaplan, a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter . . . He brings genuine expertise to his fine storytelling.” ― NYT Book Review

“One of the very best books ever written about the American military in the era of small wars . . . Fred Kaplan brings a formidable talent for writing intellectual history.” ―
The New York Review of Books

“Excellent . . . An intellectual thriller.” ―
Time

“Excellent . . . Poignant and timely . . . A good read, rich in texture and never less than wise.” ―
Foreign Policy

Praise for Daydream Believers:

“Illuminating . . . incisive.” ―
The New York Times

“Excellent and devastating . . . Go, please, and buy Kaplan’s book. His great work deserves attention and reward.” ―
Time

“Fred Kaplan has long been one of our most incisive thinkers about strategic issues. In this provocative book, he challenges many of our assumptions about the post-9/11 world and offers a dose of realism about the way the world actually works after the end of the Cold War. It’s a bracing read.” -- Walter Isaacson

Praise for The Wizards of Armageddon:

“Fascinating . . . It contains much that is not only new but stunning about the nation’s official thinking and planning for nuclear war.” ―
Washington Post Book World

“An absorbing work . . . The story of the remarkable civilians who developed the novel field of nuclear strategy—men such as Bernard Brodie, William Kaufmann, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn—is told admirably well. Even those who are familiar with this story will find fascinating details here.” ―
Foreign Affairs

“[The] definitive intellectual history of early nuclear deterrence.” -- Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars

About the Author

Fred Kaplan is the national-security columnist for Slate and the author of five previous books, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestseller), 1959, Daydream Believers, and The Wizards of Armageddon. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 1, 2016
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476763259
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476763255
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #510,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 1,014 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
1,014 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book fascinating and well-written, with comprehensive research that serves as a great starting point for understanding cyber warfare history. Moreover, the narrative is thought-provoking, and customers appreciate its coverage of cybersecurity aspects, with one review highlighting examples of cyber espionage. Additionally, customers describe it as a scary read that brings the subject to life.

75 customers mention "Readability"71 positive4 negative

Customers find the book readable, describing it as fascinating and like a novel, with one customer noting that the last chapter was particularly riveting.

"...Great read - strongly recommended to anyone working in privacy, security, civil and privacy rights, or is just interested in how we got to where we..." Read more

"...Some oldtimers are still fighting wars of the past. Good read but a little scary how those in power ignored the facts.." Read more

"Very interesting and quite unsettling and a real eyeopener. The ending was somewhat of an anticlimax." Read more

"A good read..." Read more

54 customers mention "Research quality"49 positive5 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and informative, serving as a great starting point to understand the history of cyber warfare.

"This is an informative book. But The Hacked World Order by Adam Segal and @War by Shane Harris were far more informative." Read more

"Very enlightening. I have a general idea that work is being done to mitigate threats from network exploitation. This book puts it in perspective." Read more

"...Dark Territory is a great introduction for those wanting to get started." Read more

"...It covers a great deal of history and is written in a manner that is easily understood by non-technical readers...." Read more

25 customers mention "History"25 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate how the book brings the history of cyberwar to life, providing a fascinating look at its evolution.

"A fascinating exposition of the political and administrative events that have occurred over the last three decades in regard to cyber security...." Read more

"Great contemporary history - obvious the author had many sessions with the persons involved and understands the key issues associated with the..." Read more

"This book provides a fascinating look at the evolution of cyber warfare...." Read more

"...Interesting and eye opening, and very relevant to today's world. Worth your time and money. Will be reading other books from him." Read more

21 customers mention "Writing style"20 positive1 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as well-written and historical.

"...All in all, this is a well written and extremely informative book...." Read more

"Well written with several historical anecdotes and events that tie together a few parts of the History of the Cyber War that I didn't know...." Read more

"A well researched and well written book on the perils of the modern age...." Read more

"...It is very well researched with pages of source notes. Very well written...." Read more

19 customers mention "Cybersecurity"17 positive2 negative

Customers appreciate the book's coverage of cybersecurity aspects, with one customer highlighting examples of cyber espionage and another noting government-sponsored cyber attacks.

"...The author provides numerous examples of cyber espionage like the Chinese meeting noted above...." Read more

"...War itself is changing too. The book is about the emergence of cyber warfare. This new trend is relatively new. Most of it just in the past 15 years...." Read more

"...book brings the history of cyberwar to life, and objectively presents many of the issues in ethics, technical capabilities, principles of warfare...." Read more

"There are many aspects of cybersecurity that are covered in this book...." Read more

18 customers mention "Enlightened"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book enlightening and educational, serving as a great primer into an interesting subject, with one customer noting it provides an excellent introduction to cyber strategy.

"An easy read that was educational" Read more

"...I found the book to be an excellent primer on the subject, and very readable...." Read more

"...There were many ways in which the book Softwar was prescient...." Read more

"...However, the author did an excellent job of discussing the myriad of problems and shows how persistence, leadership, cooperation and teamwork can..." Read more

17 customers mention "Narrative quality"16 positive1 negative

Customers appreciate the narrative quality of the book, finding it thought-provoking and well-structured, with one customer noting how the author skillfully weaves two narratives together.

"...Dark Territory begins with a wonderfully apt anecdote about President Ronald Reagan taking in the movie WarGames in 1983..." Read more

"...provides an essential public history of cyber war in this thought-provoking narrative that details the enduring challenges faced by U.S. senior..." Read more

"...Kaplan does a brilliant job of weaving two narratives...." Read more

"...That is a second reason to buy the book. Every page has these great stories. The story of the stuxnex virus is explained plus scores of others...." Read more

14 customers mention "Scariness level"12 positive2 negative

Customers find the book scary and disturbing, with one customer describing it as extraordinarily incisive.

"...There is a wonderful episode in Dark Territory in which President Ronald Reagan, who liked to relax by watching Hollywood movies, sees the film War..." Read more

"This book is amazing and scary at the same time. The world is changing at ever increasing rates...." Read more

"This book is a frightening light shed on the oft-elusive topic of cyber warfare - Kaplan details the history of cyber warfare's origins in the 1980s..." Read more

"Very interesting and quite unsettling and a real eyeopener. The ending was somewhat of an anticlimax." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2016
    Format: eTextbookVerified Purchase
    I did an online search of the words “Hackers” today and the top results were news stories about (yet another) bank being hacked — perhaps by a group closely associated with North Korea — and stolen passwords from social media sites offered for sale or being released online. I typically see several headlines like this during any given week, and the frequency of hacking reports has only increased over the past few years.

    So, when I saw Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan (@fmkaplan) I decided to take a look to increase my limited knowledge on this subject. I found the book to be an excellent primer on the subject, and very readable. Anyone concerned about getting lost in highly technical details need not worry: this is history, not how-to.

    Dark Territory begins with a wonderfully apt anecdote about President Ronald Reagan taking in the movie WarGames in 1983 (full disclosure: it’s one of my favorite movies of that time period) before backtracking to address two landmark events: the creation of the computer network in 1967 and the founding of the National Security Agency in 1952.

    From there the book follows a fairly linear course through key events in the years since 1990, beginning with the first Iraq War. I was aware of some of the incidents described but learned about a lot more. For me the only frustrating passages were the ones describing yet another US government committee or working group formed to review the threat of cyber attacks and provide recommendations. Yes, I know that’s how our bureaucracy ‘works,’ but still.

    One point that I appreciated Mr. Kaplan making more than once was the recognition by key figures that whatever actions our government takes in the realm of cyber warfare are also actions that can be taken against us: there is a extremely fine line between offense and defense in the cyber domain.

    As our world becomes increasingly more connected and controlled by machines, cyber security is a subject we’re all going to need to be smarter about. Dark Territory is a great introduction for those wanting to get started.
    12 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2017
    Format: eTextbookVerified Purchase
    This book provides a fascinating look at the evolution of cyber warfare. It covers a great deal of history and is written in a manner that is easily understood by non-technical readers. The author, Mr. Kaplan does a great job of describing major milestones in cyber warfare such as Solar Sunrise and Moonlight Maze.

    He also covers some of the philosophical dilemmas associated with cyber espionage. The U.S. is critical of cyber espionage on the part of foreign governments while simultaneously ensuring our own defense. That said, the difference between defense and offense in the cyber arena is difficult to distinguish. For example, President Obama had planned to chastise the Chinese government regarding their hacking attacks against the U.S. Unfortunately, Edward Snowden released classified information on cyber warfare just prior to the president’s meeting. These disclosures altered the tone of the meeting and allowed the Chinese to criticize President Obama on U.S. cyber activities instead.

    All in all, this is a well written and extremely informative book. The author provides numerous examples of cyber espionage like the Chinese meeting noted above. Non-technical readers will definitely get something out of Mr. Kaplan’s book.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2016
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    In 1984, a young French engineer and his literary associate published a technology thriller titled Softwar. In the novel, a secretive US agency named the National Software Agency or NSA implants a smart bomb in a supercomputer exported by the French government for a meteorological station in the Soviet Union. The Russian officer investigating the case discovers that, when fed with a certain password, all Soviet computers equipped with US-manufactured components are turned down and destroyed, effectively paralyzing the public utilities, industries, and militaries that they are serving. Shortly after the publication, the young author received the visit of two men in black who wanted to know where he had gotten the idea for the novel. His explanation was simple. While teaching math at the Lycée Français de New York as part of his military service through cooperation, he had created a software-engineering company that sold computer programs to various clients in France and abroad. Some clients were bad payers, and so to recover his claims, he had inserted a smart bomb in the delivered software that could be activated by a simple telephone call through a modem. The Americans were quite impressed. Without any insider information, Thierry Breton—the young French entrepreneur, who later went on to become Minister of Finance and the CEO of a major IT company in his home country—had involuntarily set his foot on a secretive program very much similar to the one depicted in his book.

    The 1984 novel is now but a distant memory in the mind of its readers, and Softwar isn’t even mentioned in Fred Kaplan’s book on “the secret history of cyber war.” But it is startling how our perception of cyber warfare—the adequate term that came to designate what the French novel had named “la guerre douce”—is shaped by the popular media. From the plane of technicians and operators up to the highest executive level, bestseller novels and popular movies alert us to new realities that are otherwise clouded in a shroud of secrecy—or dismissed as too technical. There is a wonderful episode in Dark Territory in which President Ronald Reagan, who liked to relax by watching Hollywood movies, sees the film War Games starring Matthew Broderick and then asks his top brass whether it was possible for a teenager like the one portrayed in the film by the young actor to hack into sensitive Pentagon computers. The answer—“yes, and it’s much worse than you think”—sets in motion a whole chain of events leading to the adoption of the first presidential directive on the topic of cyber war. Another popular production mentioned in the book is the movie called Sneakers, where Ben Kingsley involuntarily gives the NSA director his new mission statement in a prescient soliloquy (“The world is run by ones and zeroes… There’s a war out there… It’s about who controls the information.”). Yet another movie that had an impact on national policy was The Interview, the film that provoked the ire of the North Korean regime because it made ridicule of its leader. North Korea’s cyberattack on Sony Picture in retaliation for making the movie prompted the United States to declare it would “respond proportionally” to the attack “in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

    There were many ways in which the book Softwar was prescient. It brought to the attention of the wide public notions that were yet to find a proper name—logic bombs, viruses and worms, malware, hacking, backdoors—while pointing to some of the security challenges that the computer age brought in its wake. The plot line’s plausibility was enhanced by references to the geopolitical context—Mikhail Gorbachev features as a character in the plot, at the time he was only a rising star in the Soviet Union’s party system. The book even introduces the NSA by its acronym, at a time the intelligence agency was so secretive that insiders joked that the initials stood for “No Such Agency.” Yet “softwar”, the term coined by the authors, didn’t stick: it reeked too much of soft power, and the militaries who handled the matter didn’t want to appear as soft. Instead, the word that imposed itself was the prefix “cyber”, as in cyberspace or cyberwar, cybercrime or cyberterrorism. It stemmed from William Gibson’s science-fiction novel, The Neuromancer, also dated 1984, that became a cult classic among computer specialists. Many hackers and counter-hackers were also inspired by Cliff Stoll’s 1989 book, The Cuckoo’s Egg, in which the author working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory details the investigation that led to the capture of a East German hacker who had penetrated the system.

    Written by a Pulitzer-winning journalist, Dark Territory demonstrates that cyber war is now firmly entrenched, not just in popular culture, but also in the US’s defense and security apparatus. While other analysts would focus on geopolitics or insist on the vulnerability of the American economy to attacks through cyberspace, Fred Kaplan chose to concentrate on the domestic scene and write a history of cyber warfare. He demonstrates that this history is not limited to the twenty-first century. In fact, the concern about computer security is almost as old as computers themselves. It predates by a few months the launch of ARPANET, the ancestor of the Internet designed by DARPA (then ARPA) to connect the computers of military scientists and researchers. It is altogether fitting that the author of the first paper on the topic later went on to advise the scenarists of the two movies mentioned earlier, War Games and Sneakers. The first cyber attacks, including the ones designed as military exercises to expose the security gaps of government systems, took the military and civilian establishments entirely off-guard. No guidelines had ever been issued, no chain of command drawn up. No one was in charge or even capable of fixing the problem. According to Fred Kaplan, and despite the many reports and action plans that have been written about the topic, we have made little progress since then.

    Much of the story is about bureaucratic wrangling, office politics, inter-agency skirmishes, and administrative process. I have to confess I quickly lost track of all the expert working groups, administrative reports, blue-ribbon commissions, and presidential decrees that punctuated the way Washington dealt with the issue. Typically, each time a problem erupts, an expert group gathers and ultimately recommends that the president appoint a commission which, in turn, holds hearings and writes a report, which culminates in the drafting of another presidential directive. For somebody like me who knows how bureaucracies ‘work’, this can be rather frustrating. Yet even I was impressed by the skills exhibited by some players in the bureaucratic game. The officials who drafted directives and reports often concluded that a senior official position should be created and typically recommended the job should be theirs. An NSA director who was nominated as deputy director of the CIA sent memos to himself (from NSA head to CIA number two) in the six-week period when he held dual positions, thereby settling many of the scores between the two agencies and giving the NSA sole control of computer-based intelligence. I was also sensitized to the importance of getting the president’s attention time: on the rare occasions were presidents were briefed on cyber warfare, NSA directors typically strayed from their presentation on cyber attack to cover the much murkier ground of cyber protection, where no government agency had a clear mandate.

    At several junctures in his narrative, Kaplan insists on the realization by decision makers that “what the United States was doing to its enemies, its enemies could also do to the United States.” Information warfare isn’t just about gaining an advantage in combat; it also has to be about protecting the nation from other countries’ effort to gain the same advantage. There is a extremely fine line between offense and defense in the cyber domain: Computer Network Attack and Computer Network Defense—CNA and CND—are two sides of the same coin. Administrative reports regularly pointed out the vulnerability of electrical power grids, oil and gas pipelines, dams, railroads, waterworks, and other pieces of a nation’s critical infrastructure. Some classified exercises simulated attacks on such civilian infrastructures, and the results were devastating. And yet nobody seemed willing to address the problem. The reason was simple: “private companies didn’t want to spend the money on cyber security, and they resisted all regulations to make them do so; meanwhile, federal agencies lacked the talent or resources to do the job, except for the NSA, which had neither the legal authority nor the desire.” In addition, government agencies had no incentive to help private companies patch the holes and “zero day” points of vulnerability they discovered in commercial computer programs: they used them as points of entry into the systems of foreign governments that bought the same software applications. The void was partly filled by private consulting firms, often staffed by former government officials, that made small fortunes by finding these holes and selling their discoveries to private companies and governments—or to spies and criminals.

    It is on the side of Computer Network Attack, or cyberwar operations, that I found the book most revealing—but also the most frustrating, due to the inherent limitations on that kind of information. The least known details are disclosed on the earliest uses of computer warfare: how Saddam Hussein’s phone conversations with his generals were tapped during Operation Desert Storm after the fiber-optic network had been destroyed; how the US planned to turn off all radars and anti-aircraft batteries during its aborted 1994 invasion of Haiti through what is now called a denial of service attack; or when the NSA, along with the Pentagon and the CIA, spoofed the Serbian air-defense command by tapping into its communication lines and sending false data to its radar screens. Interestingly, these three episodes relied on the use of telecom networks—listening on conversations, flooding the entire phone system with busy signals, or hacking into telecommunication software to feed false information. By contrast, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the fight against the insurgency exploited the full gamut of cyber capabilities. Owing to the dispatch of six thousand NSA officials in these theaters, the lag time between collecting and acting on intelligence was slashed from sixteen hours to one minute. Signals intercepted from the chips of cellphones allowed SIGINT teams to track the location and movements of enemy fighters even if their phones were turned off, thereby guiding drone strikes and ground attacks. Penetrating and probing the email and cell phone networks of Iraqi insurgents also allowed US operators to send them false messages that lead them to ambushes.

    By contrast, the cyber operations waged by foreign powers get much less coverage. Russia’s cyber attacks on Estonia and on Georgia are only succinctly described, and Ukraine isn’t even mentioned. We don’t know who operates Russia’s hacker brigades: the general who answers a US delegation investigating the Moonlight Maze incident by putting the blame on “those motherf***s in intelligence” suddenly disappears from the scene. We get only minimal information on China’s PLA Unit 61398, whose deeds were partly uncovered in the 2013 report by Mendiant, a software-security firm. The role of Unit 8200, Israel’s cyber war bureau, in the development of stuxnet is not specified: we don’t know what specific contribution they made to this elaborate spy worm that paralyzed Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities in 2010. We don’t learn about the cyberwar capabilities of European countries, and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States is mentioned only in passing. This is a secret history of cyber war written only from the US perspective. In an age when cyberspace knows no borders and every big nation competes to build their own cyberwar capabilities, this is a serious limitation in an otherwise well-informed and highly readable book.
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  • Siri Canada
    5.0 out of 5 stars The next frontier
    Reviewed in Canada on December 2, 2024
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    I read this for a course and it is super interesting.
  • margaret pincus
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    Format: eTextbookVerified Purchase
    Excellent insight into the US cyber units, where they've come from and what may happen in the future. Extraordinarily well researched
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  • Cyber tech
    5.0 out of 5 stars Nice book
    Reviewed in France on July 29, 2016
    Pretty good book, full of historical details. Can be read by scholars or just curious people ! I highly recommend it !
  • Hannah Richta
    5.0 out of 5 stars A “history perspective” on an increasingly important topic
    Reviewed in Germany on May 11, 2021
    Entertaining. Eye-opening. A good, non-technical read full of interesting anecdotes.