Henry

More parable than plausible

Revisado: 06-19-21

Many people who don’t know much about modern militaries cite this book as a realistic look at the Third World War, but it is more like a parable about the dangers of ignoring certain weaknesses than it is a plausible scenario.The basic assumptions of how cyber war would work are too flawed to overlook, as they make a material impact on the sequence of events. Below will be some minor spoilers from early in the book which are representative of more serious events later.

The initial crisis involves the Chinese having absolute and total control of the entire US government’s communications and weapons systems. And I mean total. Nobody in the White House can log into a single computer, the Chinese are able to remotely override an F-35 and make it land in Iran, and every weapons system fielded by Navy aircraft simply refuse to work if within a certain radius of Chinese assets. It’s true that US assets may be seriously degraded by cyber attacks, but this is not how it’s going to happen even in a worst-case scenario. Even if the Chinese managed to compromise all US systems, that sort of attack would differ in very important ways from the magic kill switches portrayed in the book.

Then US leaders plod on as if the Chinese don’t own a kill switch for all their offensive systems. It’s barely a point of conversation going forward that every single communication and weapons system they have is apparently compromised.

Read Ghost Fleet instead if you haven’t; it’s not perfect, but the authors of that book at least made the effort to make the broad contours of the conflict plausible.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 04-14-21

Unfortunately this book spends far too much time repeating the same simple concepts. I was happy to use it as a gentle book to fall asleep to or fill time, until I hit chapter 15 and the reader became weirdly distorted and rushed. I thought voice acceleration was accidentally turned on, but it wasn’t. Listen to a different Sagan book or a Richard Dawkins book instead.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Not worth the time

Revisado: 07-21-20

The prologue makes it sound like this book is a deep psychoanalysis of Donald Trump based on a rich family history and expert analysis. Instead, it’s mostly a self-pitying autobiography that spends more than half the book establishing that the author’s grandfather is cruel for ensuring that her father (whose alcoholism made him unable to function at his preferred career as a pilot) was only moderately rich instead of very rich like Donald was. It’s an incredibly tone-deaf work that spends an inordinate amount of time making petty complaints, like how her dad’s apartment was hopeless and dreary because it didn’t have a doorman. The first two-thirds of the book could have achieved their purpose of setting the family stage in a single chapter of background if there wasn’t so much focus on how “bad” things were for her dad.

But I will save you about 8 hours of listening to sum up her findings: Donald’s dad didn’t love anyone, and his first son didn’t live up to expectations. To fill the void of disappointment, he showered Donald with money and constantly bailed him out, which made Donald an unempathetic liar who believes he can spin his way through anything without consequences. Also, Donald might have a learning disability and he was a jerk and a brat at all family engagements.

If you must read the contents of this book, get a physical copy so you can skim the first two-thirds for the basic idea and then read the last third in its entirety.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Great “read”

Revisado: 06-16-20

I really enjoyed this book. If you’re an engineer type like me, don’t be discouraged by the beginning which starts out with the ship already built and sounds like it’s just going to be a summary of events. He moves into the story behind the continued development of the craft from a political and engineering point of view and paints a vivid picture of the designers, operators, facilities, and flights.

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