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Latest Read: LikeWar

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking. LikeWar explores how social media has certainly forever changed war and politics. LikeWar was named an Amazon and Foreign Affairs book of the year and “new and notable” by the New York Times.

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking

Peter Warren Singer is Strategist at New America, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Founder & Managing Partner at Useful Fiction LLC. He previously was Director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution.

He has consulted for the US Military, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI, as well as advised a range of entertainment programs, including for Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Universal, HBO, Discovery, History Channel, and the video game series Call of Duty. Peter has previously Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Children at War, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, and finally Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and LikeWar.

Accordingly, Emerson is an analyst of national security policy and a Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, he has served as an adviser on information warfare to the National Security Council, Joint Staff, and U.S. intelligence community.

2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine

It is remarkable to read LikeWar at this time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022. The introduction of how both propaganda and advertising, including the downstream impact of fake news and misinformation) are now more powerful and more abundant via the lack of identity across social media.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Reading Technology

HBO’s The Perfect Weapon

In 2020 HBO released the documentary The Perfect Weapon based upon the best-selling book by David Sanger a New York Times national security correspondent. The book was a fantastic review of cyber attacks conducted by Russia, China and other countries deemed hostile to the US and the West. Accordingly, this documentary reveals how cyber war began. This is certainly the primary strategy today for nation state attacks. This documentary is also available on Amazon Prime.

Stuxnet, known as the cyber attack “Olympic Games” was an original US/Israel joint cyber attack. The concern was understanding the risk to a nuclear war in the Middle East in supporting Israel’s defense. The Bush Administration chose to invoke a new type of warfare.

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Education Ransomware Reading Technology

Latest Read: Sandworm

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Wired’s Andy Greenberg is most certainly a facinating story regarding Russia’s cyber attacks upon Ukraine. In fact, the backstory to Sandworm is quite remarkable. Attacks by Russia against Ukraine are just the latest in a long history of Russian aggression.

Greenberg’s work is certainly remarkable. This provides deep storylines linking Russia to NotPetya, a ransomware attack launched against Ukraine in 2016. Elements of this attack were initially launched as reconnaissance in the prior year.

At the same time, Greenberg provides amazing details regarding cyber attacks Moonlight Maze, Operation Aurora on America by Russia and China.

Indeed Sandworm provides a historical view between Russia and Ukraine upon the heels of World War II.

Harvest of Sorrow

In this period, Stalin produced a truely horrific famine across Ukraine. Unquestionably, the exploitation of Ukraine by the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany resulted in the torture and death of millions of Ukrainians. Greenberg notes the unbelievable but true horror by author Anne Applebaum in Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine:

“stories of desperate peasants resorting to eating leather and rodents, grass, and, in states of starvation-induced mania, even their own children. All of this occurred in one of the most fertile grain-production regions in the world.”

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum

In addition, these horrific attacks are echoed in Harvest of Sorrow by Soviet scholar Robert Conquest. Red Famine’s lessons provide a razor sharp backdrop to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine following the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. This is only the latest attack in a long confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.

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