Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, & the Malware Industrial Complex

by Bill Blunden, Violet Cheung

This book presents a data-driven message that exposes the cyberwar media campaign being directed by the Pentagon and its patronage networks. By demonstrating that the American public is being coerced by a threat that has been blown out of proportion—much like the run-up to the Gulf War or the global war on terror—this book discusses how the notion of cyberwar instills a crisis mentality that discourages formal risk assessment, making the public anxious and hence susceptible to ill-conceived solutions. With content that challenges conventional notions regarding cyber security, Behold a Pale Farce covers topics—including cybercrime; modern espionage; mass-surveillance systems; and the threats facing infrastructure targets such as the Federal Reserve, the stock exchange, and telecommunications—in a way that provides objective analysis rather than advocacy. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the recent emergence of Orwellian tools of mass interception that have developed under the guise of national security.

Genres: Nonfiction, Computers, Politics

448 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2014

Reviews

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arguably the best book I have read with regard to the economic incentives that drive the cybersecurity ecosystem we live within today.

The author does an excellent job of mapping out the various incentives that exist today to stymy the adoption and development of truly secure systems. The approach taken is to map out a truly complex topic, on the one hand you have the drive for absolute observation and thus absolute security, on the other you have the drive for individual privacy. Here the book hi-lights how external threats are being used to drive to justify a deeper need to observe everything about our lives and actions.

Compelling arguments, though my sense is the risk is not in mass surveillance, rather it is in the reason and intent of the mass surveillance. The former is where things get complex, the latter where things get dystopian.