Battlefield Cyber

How China and Russia Are Undermining Our Democracy and National Security

By: Michael G. McLaughlin, William Holstein

Narrated by: Steve Menasche

The United States is being bombarded with cyber-attacks. From the surge in ransomware groups targeting critical infrastructure to nation states compromising the software supply chain and corporate email servers, malicious cyber activities have reached an all-time high. Russia attracts the most attention, but China is vastly more sophisticated. They have a common interest in exploiting the openness of the Internet and social media—and our democracy—to erode confidence in our institutions and to exacerbate our societal rifts to prevent us from mounting an effective response. Halting this digital aggression will require Americans to undertake sweeping changes in how we educate, organize and protect ourselves and to ask difficult questions about how vulnerable our largest technology giants are.

If we are waiting for a “Cyber 9/11” or a “Cyber Pearl Harbor,” we are misunderstanding how our adversaries wage cyber warfare. This is a timely and critically important book. No other book has analyzed the threat of cyber warfare with the depth and knowledge brought to the subject by the authors.

It has now become a cliché to argue that a “whole of government” or “whole of society” response is necessary to respond to this crisis, but that concept has never been more important. It will take many years and billions of dollars to even begin to secure our IT systems and prevent the slow rot that is destroying America. Using language that the layman can understand, we wish to educate Americans about what has happened and inspire them to seek solutions.

©2023 Michael McLaughlin and William J. Holstein (P)2023 Rowman & Littlefield

Great book, issues with playback

Awesome book. I highly recommend to anyone interested in the field of cyber. The narrator was good, but I found it to have been read far too slowly. I had to speed it up to 1.2 for it to feel a good pace for me. This would have been fine, but chapter 12 seemed to have technical issues. it was going so fast I had to slow it down to .75 for it to even be legible. the quality also seemed to be off as well, it was quieter and had a distortion sound in the background. After chapter 12, the quality returned to normal.

overall I would still recommend even with this issue. A great book!

Timely, important and compelling

I was very impressed with how much the authors covered in this book which surveys the troubling contemporary landscape of cyber threats to the U.S., principally from China and Russia. As a professional in this area, I think my standards are high. I learned much from the book, benefited from refresh in other areas, and overall appreciated the “big picture” approach combined with many salient facts. Highly recommended!

A wake up call to America

Informative and eye-opening story about how our technology has been systematically undermined and manipulated primarily by Russia and China.
I enjoyed that the authors proposed tangible solutions and didn’t just raise the alarm.
As an IT professional for over 25 years, parts of this book were reductionist or overly simplistic, but that’s forgivable given it’s geared towards a mainstream audience. Likewise with the lack of technical depth into some of the hacks highlighted.

good book, make narrator to 1.2 minimum

the story was interesting but I had to speed up the speaker, his voice was distracting

Lack case studies on Russian threats and attacks.

We get it, China has their claws in our Capitalism culture and dependency on their supply chain. This book did not, however, put equal emphasis on Russian's threats with case studies when it comes to misinformation that attacked the veins of our democractic culture.

Gripping, frightening, and yet optimistic

Written for the general public in non-technical terms, this book sounds many alarms! Our biggest trade partner, China, is also our most manipulative, ruthless enemy.
And the Russians more insidious than expected.
The manipulation of social media and news with propaganda designed to put Americans against one another has been sadly effective.

Good book, but issues with certain chapters

Chapter 6 is completely missing and chapter 12 is read at 3x speed so its hard to listen to.