@War

September 8, 2014
Cyber-espionage is the “single most productive means of gathering information about our country’s adversaries,” writes Harris (The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State), senior writer for Foreign Policy, in this unnerving exposé. After 9/11, the National Security Administration (NSA), the nation’s global information-gathering agency, submitted a wish list to the Bush administration. It was approved and the “military-Internet complex was born.” According to Harris, electronic eavesdropping was fundamental to 2007’s Iraq surge and the NSA located Osama bin Laden through spyware planted in his operatives’ mobile phones. On the other hand, Chinese hackers have stolen important military and industrial secrets, revealing how adversaries could sabotage computer-dependent infrastructure. Warning that we remain staggeringly vulnerable, America’s cyberdefenders have persuaded an obliging Congress to provide an avalanche of money and to ease privacy laws. Readers will squirm as they learn how every communications enterprise (Google, AT&T, Verizon, Facebook) cooperates with the national security establishment. Harris delivers a convincing account of the terrible cyberdisasters that loom, and the intrusive nature of the fight to prevent them. Agent: Tina Bennett, William Morris Endeavor.