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Cyberweapons Arms Race
Non-Fiction Forum
Hosted by:
Peter Lamell
Dianne Jacobs
November 14, 2022 @ 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm
FreeFilled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism.
This will be another stimulating and enlightening Melbourne Forum book group discussion.
Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.
This is the untold story of the cyberweapons market – the most secretive, invisible, government-sponsored market on earth – and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.
Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break in and scamper through the world’s computer networks invisibly until discovered. One of the most coveted tools in a spy’s arsenal, a zero day has the power to tap into any iPhone, dismantle safety controls at a chemical plant and shut down the power in an entire nation – just ask the Ukraine.
Zero days are the blood diamonds of the security trade, pursued by nation states, defense contractors, cybercriminals, and security defenders alike. In this market, governments aren’t regulators; they are clients.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (Bloomsbury Publishing (16 February 2021) is where cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth’s unravels an opaque, code-driven market from the outside in.
As the stakes get higher and higher in the rush to push the world’s critical infrastructure online, this book is the urgent and alarming discovery of one of the world’s most extreme threats.
‘An intricately detailed, deeply sourced and reported history of the origins and growth of the cyberweapons market . . . Hot, propulsive . . . Sets out from the start to scare us out of our complacency’ New York Times (Bestseller list)
‘A terrifying exposé’ The Times
‘Part John le Carré and more parts Michael Crichton . . . Spellbinding’ New Yorker
Winner of Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for 2021 and the judges ‘lauded Perlroth’s unprecedented in-depth analysis, which they said had opened their eyes to the potential for a cyber catastrophe.’
Read the book, come with an open mind, hear differing perspectives in this intimate, digital format and uncover what your fellow readers think.
Other books this interest group is discussing:
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