Cybersecurity

Review: Fred Kaplan's 'Dark Territory'

A Pulitzer Prize winner in journalism and now a columnist for Slate, Fred Kaplan has written a number of highly regarded books on national security issues, including “The Wizards of Armageddon”, on the creation of Cold War nuclear strategy; “Daydream Believers”, about the thinkers in the George W. Bush administration who believed they could transform the world with minimal costs; and “The Insurgents”, about the counterinsurgency theorists who tried to change the American way of war and (unsuccessfully) clean up the mess left behind by the people in Kaplan’s earlier books.

“Dark Territory” builds on this trifecta, taking the reader into the world of the new security topic du jour — cyberwar. The title comes from the former Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, who said that when it comes to the questions of conflict in the digital age, “we’re wandering in dark territory”. There is widespread uncertainty not just about how a cyberwar should be fought, but also over the fundamentals of who should fight it and even whether it is a war or not.