David E. Sanger

David Sanger’s “Perfect Weapon” (PW) is an excellent overview of 21st century weaponry and war. Author Sanger is the NYTimes national security correspondent and he teaches national security policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. At 308 pages, PW is the Perfect Book for this subject - extremely readable, even for non-technos like myself. It is interesting, revealing, often anecdotal and scary. It identifies all the key players, and the top five includes a couple most of us show more would leave out – the USA, Russia, and China of course, but also North Korea and Iran. While it offers hope for the next generation, it pulls no punches in identifying some worrying risks for the nearer term.

Sanger starts with three incidents that most of us are rather familiar with: the hacking of the DNC, the destruction of the Iranian nuclear labs, and the Snowden affair. However, Sanger includes background and impacts for each, enhancing our understanding of what happened and the longer term impacts of these events. For example, the Iranian centrifuge destruction was a joint US-Israeli operation (suspected for years after, but not proven) which hinged on the development of malware twenty times more powerful than anything used prior. Mock-ups of the Iranian labs were constructed in Tennessee and Israel. The code caused centrifuges used to develop nuclear product to run at non-controllable speeds, eventually blowing up, destroying facilities and killing lab technicians. While It has still not been made clear how the code found its way to Iran’s systems, there is nevertheless a realization that the attackers fumbled a bit and consequently the code leaked out to the rest of the world causing considerable collateral damage. In a similar vein, a very interesting rendition of North Korean failures of missile launches in 2016, followed by the next year’s complete turn-around of their launching and test capabilities illustrates how effective cyber weapons might be and how quickly how some defenses may respond. It’s a very new world….

And to that point, Sanger makes the distinction between cyber and nuclear warfare throughout PW. For example, each of the big five have the capability of causing significant damage to the vital infrastructure of the others. And the scariest element of such an attack is that would come not only instantaneously but also anonymously. Undetectable. Of course, months and months later, perhaps years, there would likely be “proof” of the attacker’s identity, but initially there would be only speculation. So, how to respond? Oh, and other countries malware already resides in many of US utilities’ systems, and vice versa. Huge issues, scary issues. And if you have ever watched any government hearings and listened to some of our senior leadership struggle with respondent’s techno jive (as I would in their place), you become a bit uneasy over who and how are some of our long term and very, very, very short term decisions being made.

And who is responsible for building hack-proof systems to defend our electric grid? To defend Sony Pictures? Government? Industry? And who responds if Tech company ABC headquartered in California but a global company, is attacked? What if their operations in China are attacked? Who responds and how? Tough questions, no easy answers.

It’s all in the book. I highly recommend that you read it. show less

David Sanger’s “The Perfect Weapon” is largely a compilation of reporting he and The New York Times produced over the past few years about American preparedness for cyberwarfare.

Sanger complains the America isn’t prepared, has no policy or dividing line between cyberespionage and offensive attacks, has greater vulnerability than other nations because of its advanced economy, and is regularly giving up secrets because of the porousness of its government’s own networks.

Really show more there’s little new here.

In spite of the lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks, it sounds as though the American intelligence community is once again at war with American offensive capability: the spooks fear sharing their knowledge of their foes with the defence establishment who want to intrude and cripple the enemy.

And the enemy is getting smarter. In addition to stealing American secrets, Chinese investment is buying into Silicon Valley startups and getting full warning about what is on the horizon.

What anyone will find alarming about this analysis is that few in Washington know when or if to use conventional weapons in this new environment.

The current confusion over Russian meddling in the 2016 election being a case in point. Donald Trump aside, America is unsure what the most useful response to Putin should be, what will be a sufficient disincentive to future meddling both in American infrastructure and those of its allies. (NOTE: As I write this Chinese countervailing duties target Republican strongholds in the MidWest. Why Russian trolls count as “political meddling” in internal US affairs and the Chinese blowback doesn’t escapes me.)

This is what Trump ought to be hashing out at NATO meetings.

If the Stuxnet attacks on Iranian centrifuges showed American and Israeli cyberforces on the forefront, much of that lead may have disappeared as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea throw greater and greater resources at the problem.

Korea has even resorted to cybercrime to finance their programs.

But these vulnerabilities raise an even more fundamental issue: think back to the invention of the Internet by contractors working for DARPA. The original purpose of the Internet was to distribute control of American defence command to withstand a debilitating nuclear attack.

It is the very structure of the Internet which is opening American vulnerabilities, giving safe haven to America’s foes, and is proving a fertile testing ground for new and diabolical weapons of mass destruction.

Here again technology is coming back on itself. America’s (and our) foes are throwing its weapons back at itself very, very quickly. When it took years for the Soviets to replicate the American Atomic bombs and delivery mechanism, and its hydrogen bombs, the timeline for stealing NSA weapons and throwing back against the allies has dramatically shrunken.

This has the potential to dramatically increase tensions and destabilize all of our societies.

Overlay these tensions with advances in AI, genetic engineering, climate change, and new techniques to 3D print and distribute weapons, and you get one heck of a toxic environment.

That really sucks. show less

In "Confront and Conceal, or "The Reckoning" as it's CD release is called, David Sanger, the Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times, provides an insider's look at the Foreign Policy President Obama, and how it transitioned from that of George W. Bush to his own.

There may be some individuals hesitant to read this book given that Mr. Sanger has three strikes against him (he's from NY, a Harvard graduate, and working for the NY Times). But being bright and having the credentials show more to gain access to administration insiders are keys to being able to compile and explain the facts. And Sanger does a good job of explaining where he thinks Obama has done a good job, and where he thinks the Obama decisions are problematic.

Sanger's book offers great insights into Obama's foreign policy decisions, and how they track or differ from the Bush decisions and policies he inherited. The topics covered are extensive, and include the decisions to take out Bin Laden, continued and expanded use of drones, Egypt and the Arab Spring, the different and conflicted decisions on Libya and Syria, the China dilemma, North Korea, etc. I thought one of the more interesting aspects of the book were the details provided on the Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program, and of the need for enhanced cyber security. I believe the book will provide anyone with a much better picture of the complexities of foreign policy decisions, and of the complex relations with our allies and enemies. show less

In The Perfect Weapon, author David E Sanger does an excellent job of terrifying me. With America’s Allies and Enemies having Cyber weapons and attack capabilities, you would think that the leadership of America would have some kind of plan or something. Apparently, they do not have anything of the kind. Our weapons of mass destruction are aging at a steady rate, the launch computers are apparently using Floppy Disc Drives, and the people in charge of reacting to the threats are sitting on show more their laurels. It is really quite ridiculous to think that some old person who knows nothing of computers and what they are capable of is in charge of making laws and things, but that is the case in America. Then you have to combine that with the fact that our own laws and bureaucratic tendencies make us slow to react and you have a giant recipe for disaster.

Now I suppose it is not all bad, there is this book that was allowed to print I suppose. However, keeping our own capabilities a secret is like shooting ourselves in the foot. Not to mention that the people with legit access to our secrets are idiots. Do you know how the Russians accessed some really important line in the Chain of Command that stems directly from the President? Some idiot found a USB drive lying on the ground somewhere and plugged it into a computer station with access. That is ridiculous.

The book is named the way it is because, when used properly, Cyber weapons are difficult to trace and pin on any single aggressor. They are silent, and in many cases cause annoyance rather than straight up death.

The author gives some advice, but a lot of it will fall on deaf ears. Thus, this book sickens me. It wasn’t really enjoyable, but it was quite informative. show less