Author: Nicole Perlroth
Written by a New York Times journalist, this book on cyber warfare and the global cyber arms race won the FT business book of the year, and it is easy to see why. It is a real page-turner. It fizzes with intrigue, danger and dubious characters.
The book focuses on so-called zero-day hacks. I am not a technology expert so bear with me. I think a zero-day hack is a bug in the software (or perhaps even hardware) that the developer does not know about. Until the software developer fixes the vulnerability, hackers can use these exploits to extract data, snoop on users and engage in other nefarious activities.
I like how the book captures how we have sleepwalked into a world where we have traded away security and privacy for convenience and frictionless online experiences. We know this for individuals, but we forget that this has also happened in our power supply, water supply, and other critical infrastructure. As a result, we are leaving them open to attack. Open to attack from pranksters and criminals, but also hackers employed by nation-states (or hacking groups loosely aligned to nation-states).
The book is excellent at dissecting the line that our secret services walk on zero-day hacks. They collect them by finding them or buying them for their use. But, they can’t be sure whether less friendly parties have collected the same hacks. So when do they tell the western software firms that they have a bug that needs fixing? And if they do, is it too late? Enemies and allies all use the same systems. Microsoft is everywhere. You can no longer cut a hole in something without poking a hole in security for everyone.
Eventually, hubris gets you. All the recent hacking stories in the US (and, to a lesser extent, in the UK) show that your enemies can be as good at poking holes in systems as you. For every Stuxnet, there is a WannaCry or a NotPetya
The author is clever with the title. Perhaps that is the journalist in the author. “This is how they tell me the world ends.” She is not saying that she thinks the world will end this way. Someone else does. But the title also seems to reference how TS Eliot ends his, arguably, most famous poem, The Hollow Men.
“This is how the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”
I think it means we fear the bomb, the blaze of glory, but all we’ll get is to fade away—a death by a thousand cuts. The poem’s epigraph references Guy Fawkes and “Mistah Kurtz” from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (a character reimagined as Colonel Kurtz in Apocolypse Now). Apocalypse now ends:
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath –
“The horror! The horror!”
Is cyber war the death by a thousand cuts? If we are only nine meals from anarchy, can a cyber war put us over the edge? You can imagine our online lives turned inside out in a cyber war. ATMs frozen, payment terminals down, power down, production lines stopped—massive economic impact. Former US Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, estimated the costs of the NotPetya cyberattack at $10 billion. But does that mean defeat? Somewhat presciently, the book starts its story in Ukraine in 2019, the target of the NotPetya attack. However, Russia conducted a more conventional invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It seems cyber warfare has its benefits. It softens up and bewilders its victims. It stops short of a declaration of war. But if you want to conquer, you must put troops in the field. As the Ukrainians are showing massive cyber warfare resources alongside massive conventional resources does not guarantee victory.
Buy the book here: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/this-is-how-they-tell-me-the-world-ends-winner-of-the-ft-mckinsey-business-book-of-the-year-award-2021/9781526629852
The Lord Meyricks 