The author covered these stories as an investigative reporter for the New York Times at the time when they were first in the news. Of course part of the story also includes the Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks affairs, and the ripple effects they had on subsequent relations between tech companies and nation states. Some of the better known incidents elaborated by this book include (1) Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election, (2) American/Israeli computer worm Stuxnet that blew up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, (3) Russian cyberattacks on Estonia and Ukraine, (4) the 2014 North Korean cyberattacks on Sony Pictures, and (5) the 2017 worldwide cyberattack by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm. Additionally, encompassing all these stories into one book at this time allows the pondering of their ramifications on privacy, crime, and international relations. However, the retelling in this book at this time has the advantage of hindsight which provides the enabling perspective regarding background, motive and attribution that were largely uncertain when the stories were first reported. This book consists largely of the retelling of cyber attack incidents that have previously been in the news over the past ten years. With the deep knowledge and bright clarity that have long characterized his work, Sanger recounts the cunning and dangerous development of cyberspace into the global battlefield of the 21st century.' -Washington Post

Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend against Russia's broad attack on the 2016 US election. Two presidents-Bush and Obama-drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran's nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump's first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. 'An important-and deeply sobering-new book about cyberwarfare' (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times), now updated with a new chapter.

The perfect weapon sanger