Books to Read

In the final moments of the 2018 general election, in which I was the Democratic candidate for New York's 23rd district, we -- I and my opponent, Tom Reed -- were in a debate in Olean, in the far southwestern corner of the state. I do not even recall the full context in which I mentioned the national security needs for Congress to address our country’s cybersecurity posture when a man jumped up from my opponent’s section of the audience (almost as if on cue) and screamed, “It never happened!” He referred to the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, the ultimate reason why I left my work at UMass Amherst and entered politics. I wasn’t even talking about that specific issue. In fact, I went to say that in my years at Cornell, I watched Chinese hackers, almost certainly from the military and government, suck whatever they could out of our networks: intellectual property, expensive subscription journals and research data. It didn’t matter. The point was to obfuscate my point with Republican playbook histrionics. “It never happened,” he kept yelling, and he returned to it at the end of the debate, when he made a beeline to me, breaking through a crowd of supporters, to disruptively make his point.

It happened. Rational people knew it happened then, and they know for sure now. Reported on many times over, I am in mind of it again having just finished Nicole Perlroth’s This Is How They Tell Me the World Is Going to End. Eminently readable, this book should be read, talked about and dealt with in government, education and corporate America. This post is not so much a book review. For that, there are many examples, and if one wants to really get the picture with Solarwinds in it -- because it was published just before that huge event -- Terry Gross’s subsequent interview with Perlroth would be a good amendment. Bruce Schneier’s Click Here to Kill Everybody is a fine complement. David Sanger’s The Perfect Weapon is also a must-read of recent books that take on this subject. In other words, it is happening. Republicans, denying it is tantamount to opening the gates.

Here is the point of this post: Diplomacy. Authors circle around it. Perlroth tells a better story that anyone about how Presidents Obama and Xi shook hands and brought down Chinese interference measurably until the Trump administration revived it. Many authors inevitably say something about the need for “rules” in cyberspace. Laura DeNardis's The Global War for Internet Governance brings governance squarely to light. Add her new book on cybersecurity, internet governance and human rights to the list: The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World With No Off Switch. Shake. Stir. Ice to taste. At the end of the day, we will not address what needs to be accomplished in the challenges of global cyber(in)security until we build diplomacy into it.

I hope that the Biden administration takes note.