Category: Book review

Book review: This is how they tell me the world ends: The cyber weapons arms race

JimMeyrickLeave a comment

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

Book review: Platform revolution

JimMeyrickLeave a comment

Platform Revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and how to make them work for you.

By Geoffrey G Parker, Marshall W Van Alstyne and Sanger Paul Choudary

A readable book that in parts overplays its hand and in others glosses over matters contrary to their thesis. I guess it is enlightening in its case studies and intriguing in its ideas, but also superficial. 

I think it overplays its hand because as starts from the position that the platform is a new and unique phenomenon. The authors define a platform as: 

A business based on enabling value-creating interactions between external producers and consumers. The platform provides an open, participative infrastructure and sets governance conditions for them. The platform’s overarching purpose: to consummate matches amount users and facilitate the exchange of goods, services or social currency, thereby enabling value creation for all participants.

OK. Sounds good. But, delete “social currency” and you could be describing Chelford livestock market. And that is the problem with this book. It has doubled down on defining this “new” business model that it does not appear to think critically. 

It also, fairly unthinkingly, reproduces the Tom Goodwin line that:

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.

Undoubtedly this is an exciting and attention-grabbing idea, and I have seen this arresting quote all over the place. Yet all are, to a lesser or greater extent, false comparisons. Minicab companies don’t usually own the cars used by their drivers. Facebook isn’t a media company or publisher, at least that is what it insists to regulators around the world. Like Alibaba, Bury market never held any inventory. And St Ives holiday cottages doesn’t own any of the cottages you can rent through them. 

Ultimately all are brokers. However, the advance of technology allows these business to be at a scale hitherto unimagined, and to be smarter and faster at matching supply with demand. I am not belittling the technology or suggesting that somehow these businesses are not different. The technology is important, and these new companies are different. But, it is wrong to suggest that these new business models were unknown to science. 

Overall I think more sceptical writers would have done the topic greater justice. For instance, the issue of data and governance are spoken about but not explored with a more jaundiced eye. As we have seen with Airbnb’s recent move to inspect all the properties listed on its website; basing your reputation on review systems that are gamed works until it doesn’t. Similarly, the concept of social currency could have been looked at in more depth. Is social currency simply selling attention, so marketing and advertising, or is it genuine new phenomena? Famously you can’t eat money, but at least you can buy food with it. Can you say the same about social currency?

In my opinion, Shoshana Zuboff wrote a better book on the changing economy and the novel aspects (and concerns it brings). Albeit her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is a touch overwritten in the opposite direction. It is overly negative. This short blast through the Facebooks and Airbnbs of this world is more optimistic and has more applicable ideas for business folk. For me the sweet spot is somewhere between the two books. To be pithy the book platform revolution is the ideal primer for those who want to sound like the zeitgeist without too much effort. Whereas, Shoshana’s book is the smartest person you know drunk on conspiracy. So why not read both?