The Wires of War, Technology and The Global Struggle For Power, by Jacob Helberg, AVID Reader Press  2021   

… tour de force on the rapidly increasing challenge of techno-authoritarian nations to our national security, our economy, and our democracy...Bill Clinton

… prescient analysis of China's technological ambitions to export its political influence and erode democracy around the world.  If you're interested in how technology is reshaping international politics, this book is a must read.  Ro Khanna, U. S. House of Representatives.

When you woke up this morning, it wasn't because the alarm went off.  And the light switch did nothing.  Walking downstairs, everything was quiet - no furnace rumbling, the stove and microwave clocks  blank.  Hmmm.  Must be another power outage, you thought.  But then.... other routines weren't up.... no morning news updates, Alexa wasn't responding and the stove still didn't work.  Still, it was time to get onto Route 128 before the traffic, and so you hustled out to the driveway. Thank goodness the car was still there... Ignition fine, but no cell reception here in the car either.  And in the near distance, sirens....blue lights flashed as cruisers ran down Pine Street toward the highway.  Something wasn't right, and maybe today was not a good day to hit the road...

Not hard to imagine the quiet chaos introduced into our wired lives if "something happened" to the web, to our satellite communications, to the power grid, to home wifi - the connection list grows longer every hour, forcing us to realize there is vulnerability here. But according to author and former Google exec Jacob Helberg, the potential for personal inconvenience is far outweighed by an international threat looming not far off - and that is the crux of this book alarm - a warning about the high-stakes cyberwar rumbling between Western democracies and the autocracies of China and Russia.  Its a new cold war, one not built on hardware like tanks and artillery, but rather a cold war that can take over what we see and hear on our screens - servers, computers, monitors, laptops, tablets, earbuds, 5G networks and of course cell phones - all the communications and guidance systems on which we have become dependent.  We know that the winners of this struggle can capture our banking systems, military defenses and national security, as well as our sovereignty as an independent democracy.  

What we may have wished for from the creation of the World Wide Web, like the birth and growth of nuclear energy applications, has not turned out as we had hoped.  The stats are discouraging - Chinese manufacturers produce 90% of the worlds mobile phones.  Author Helberg calls this new Cold War the Gray War, and he warns that the clock is ticking; he urges the US to create a democratic techno-bloc to resist Chinese autocratic dominance in  IT and communications.

Chapter 4, "The Future of National Sovereignty Is Tech, Not Troops" takes us to the year 2049, when China prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary.  Not everyone, however, is prepared to party.  Helberg creates a character named Fei-Fei Wu, a young dissident who seeks asylum at the US embassy in Beijing after having published details of her treatment by authorities.  Her blog posts spark outcries from followers, and the government reacts with more seizures of popular communications vehicles, while protesters are detained in "re-education facilities."  The implications, says Helberg, for other countries dependent on China's economic moves, is frightening as the Chinese government exercises its full web communications and disinformation power outside its own borders. Such a hypothetical playbook according to Helberg is actually not too difficult to imagine - e.g. TikTok, and the BBC Uyghurs controversy.

Yet the author remains hopeful - "China is not fated to eclipse the United States and dominate the world.  Nor is the United States guaranteed to  sustain its position of global leadership without breaking a sweat.  For all the lightning-fast algorithms and terabytes of data, all the cables and satellites and semiconductors, there may be no greater force in this fight than the power of human agency.  We have the power to choose  …So in spite of it all, I am genuinely optimistic...… there are few countries better equipped to win the Gray War than the United States."

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com