The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age
By David E. Sanger
Random House, 2018
“Oh man. I only ride them. I don’t know what makes them work.”
-Donald Sutherland as “Oddball” on why he’s not helping fix his tank. “Kelly’s Heroes,” 1970
Simply put, the cyber world is so big and so ubiquitous that Americans both demand more from it and take it for granted without really understanding anything about it, which means that despite available evidence to the contrary we downplay it as a security threat. It is this problem that veteran NY Times writer David Sanger seeks to remedy in “The Perfect Weapon,” an extensive account of the 21st Century cyberwars with the US serving as witness, instigator and victim. Sanger’s work is a journalistic tour de force, yet one that’s so comprehensive that it arguably undermines its goal of increasing public awareness on cyber-related concerns. The book also did an excellent job integrating cyber into other national security and political issues – e.g. nuclear deterrence, public-private sector cooperation and balancing national security with individual freedom. “The Perfect Weapon” is a clarion call for increased public awareness into cyber risks past, present and future; one that may not be heeded.
For the uninitiated, “The Perfect Weapon” serves as a (sort of) primer into the world of cyber warfare. It’s all there: the Stuxnet attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, Edward Snowden and Wikileaks, Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia and (deceased casino magnate/ardent supporter of Israel) Sheldon Adelson, North Korea hacking into Sony in response to “The Interview,” China hacking into the Obama 2008 campaign, the US perhaps disrupting North Korean ballistic missile tests, Russia hacking into the Democratic National Committee and more. Each incident taken on its own is extremely significant, and Sanger’s subject area expertise, balanced approach – showing the US initiating and defending from attacks – and extensive source combined makes his book both authoritative and believable. The “sort of” qualifier was a product of “The Perfect Weapon” being a little overwhelming content wise for readers just getting into the topic. One might be tempted to get the reader to go back into Sanger’s original reporting in the Times for more digestible background information before tackling this work.
Sanger also shines when he discusses how the evolving cyber warfare world interfaces with existing kinetic warfare doctrines and related issues. He relates how (then) Mossad Chief Meir Dagan saw Stuxnet as a lower risk, higher reward alternative to bombing, e.g. lower risk to Israeli lives, less physical and political collateral damage, including the risk of a kinetic attack driving Iran’s program deeper underground (26). Some also see cyber as a cheaper, more effective way of defending from North Korean missiles, by disabling or destroying them before they are utilized, i.e. “left of launch” (275). As General James (Hoss) Cartwright put it, overreliance on nuclear deterrence limited US ability to deal with new threats while use of cyber weapons expanded them (16). On the flip side, Sanger also questions whether another adversary’s cyber capabilities to do the same to the US would undermine confidence in nuclear deterrence and cause it to build even more nuclear weapons or preemptively launch them earlier in a crisis. Outside of the purely military sphere, “The Perfect Weapon” also clearly illustrated many of the conflicted ways Americans view the subject. Sanger wrote that effective cyber-defense may be too large a task for the government to handle, but also noted tech companies' hesitancy to fully commit to the effort. The American people want security but love their TikTok and don’t want the government rooting around in their private cyber-lives to help achieve it.
In the big picture, despite Sanger’s many warning shots, the ubiquity of the cyber world, its entrenchment in our private lives and the US’s continued focus on national security in geographical and physical terms still make the cyber threats more of an abstraction. If a cyber 9/11 or Pearl Harbor lays ahead, we can’t say we weren’t warned.