The Perfect Weapon

War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger

Hardcover, 357 pages

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2018 by Crown.

ISBN:: 978-0-451-49789-5
OCLC Number:: 1038453249

(8 reviews)

The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend the 2016 U.S. election from interference by Russia, with Vladimir Putin drawing on the same playbook he used to destabilize Ukraine.

Moving from the White …

Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target.

3 editions

ogd5XOt reviewed The Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger

An Amateur Effor from Someone Who Should Know Better

2 stars

This book is a mess. I can't tell if Sanger simply doesn't understand technical minutia or if his writing is so sloppy his explanations are useless - probably a bit of both.

The author repeatedly latches on to the most scandalous explanation of certain events, occasionally even acknowledging more mundane explanations are plausible and then proceeding to spend dozens of pages building up the more outlandish story. He extrapolates on scant details and builds complex theories on nothing other than pure speculation.

Further, many of his predictions on the future of cyberwar have simply proven incorrect in places like Ukraine. I can't necessarily fault Sanger for that - pretty much everyone in the information security community made the same forecasts - but nonetheless, they're wrong.

Go read Kim Zetter or Andy Greenberg.

woollypigs reviewed The Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger

Review of 'The Perfect Weapon' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Very good read, but I had read/heard most of what is in it before in news articles, interviews, podcasts.

schmudde reviewed Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger

Review of 'Perfect Weapon' on Goodreads

4 stars

Sanger manages to cover the issue of cyberconflict broadly while also offering the most comprehensive account of what occurred during the 2016 election. He rarely infers, basing the accounts contained within on his sources from the top levels of the United States government.

Considering the role contractors play in the intelligence industrial complex, it would have been nice to have a greater representation of non-government sources, but the book never suffers from a lack of credibility.

It reads like a very long New York Times article with an op-ed at the end. This isn't necessarily I enjoyed, but I appreciate the author's pragmatism.

If you want to understand what's been happening at the dawn of information warfare, this is your book.