Fred Kaplan (2) (1954–)

A very dense, detailed book. If you love behind the scenes details and are a policy wonk, this book is for you. The author provides a very detailed narrative of how our cyber defense program (or lack thereof), came about. It certainly was not an effort by just one individual or department. It was more of a progression of ideas, questions, inquiries, etc. over decades.

This is not a page turner by any definition. I suggest you keep this one on the nightstand and read it during bedtime. Definitely a book for only those who are curious about the history of and current state of cyber warfare in the United States. Don't expect a James Patterson type thriller.… (mehr)

Fred Kaplan's book "Dark Territory" really points out how susceptible all our internet computer networks are, and how important this is as a National Security threat. Kaplan points out how our military has been working on cyber war over the past several decades, and how other individuals and governments have been using cyber war against us.

One one hand, Kaplan makes it sound like any and all electronic devices can be hacked, and yet we all probably remember the difficulties the FBI had trying to access the cell phones of the San Bernadino shooters. I guess that all points out that as it's all a continually evolving game of defense and offense, fixing one problem, and then another innovation is made.

It was interesting to read how the cyber wars evolved, and how slow some in the private sector and in the military were before they took the danger seriously. It was also interesting to read about how the NSA handled metadata collection and analysis before and after the Snowden revelations.

This book, plus Marc Goodman's book "Future Crimes" which details how we're all susceptible to cyber hacking, and what we can do about it, serve as good reminders of the security problems we're living with. ​… (mehr)