David Sanger

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In THE PERFECT WEAPON, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger traces the escalation of cyberwarfare, and explores how wars can now be won-or lost-without a shot being fired.

For seventy years, the thinking inside the Pentagon was that only nations with nuclear weapons could threaten America's existence. But that assumption is now in doubt: in a world in which almost everything is interconnected-phones, cars, electrical grids, and satellites-everything can be disrupted, if not destroyed. In THE PERFECT WEAPON (on sale June 19), New York Times national security correspondent and bestselling author David Sanger vividly details how this new revolution, being conducted largely in secret, is reshaping global power.

"Cyberweapons are so cheap to develop and so easy to hide that they have proven irresistible for large and small powers alike," Sanger writes. "Because such attacks rarely leave smoking ruins, Washington remains befuddled about how to respond. Our adversaries have realized that it's a great way to undercut us without being made to pay any real price for such actions."

Focusing largely on the "Seven Sisters" of cyber conflict-the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Iran, Israel, and North Korea-THE PERFECT WEAPON is the dramatic story of how cyber conflict has expanded since the revelation of the American/Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear program. Sanger exposed the story of Washington's role in those attacks six years ago, in his book CONFRONT AND CONCEAL. Now he explores how great and small powers alike have moved into a new era of constant sabotage, misinformation, and fear, in which everyone is a target.

A decade ago, there were three or four nations with effective cyber forces; now there are more than thirty. As of early 2018, the best estimates suggest there have been upward of two hundred state-on-state cyberattacks over the past decade or so-a figure that describes only those that have become public. Yet as the global cyber conflict took off, America turned out to be remarkably unprepared. Its own weapons were stolen from the American arsenal by a group called Shadow Brokers and were quickly turned against the United States and its allies. Even while the United States built up a powerful new Cyber Command, it had no doctrine for how to use it. Deterrence failed. When under attack-by Russia, China, Iran or North Korea-the government was often paralyzed, unable to use cyberweapons when America's voting system, its electrical system, and even routers in citizens' homes had been infiltrated by foreign hackers. American citizens, Sanger concludes, have become the collateral damage in a war being fought in foreign computer networks and along undersea cables.