Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft

by Jon R. Lindsay

318 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2025

Reviews

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be the most useful (and correct) scholarly framing of cyber security in the realm of state policy. In contrast to the "cyber war" narrative, which perpetuates in direct contrast to real-world evidence, and cyber persistence theory, which as Lindsay points out reads as cybercom's self-narrative of its importance, Lindsay's theory of cyber as secret statecraft appears like the truth almost hiding in plain sight. State use of cyber has primarily been linked to intelligence agencies and overwhelmingly covert. While Lindsay necessarily had to overlook some case studies (including the entire category of ransomware, which I found frustrating), he provided a useful look at his selected cases with careful grounding to their operational and strategic impacts. I did find his emphasis on the quad chart framework of threat institutional sophistication and target vulnerability to be a little over-stretched with the many forms he had to shape it to apply to his varying cases, but that feels like a necessary limitation to qualitative analysis of an evolving and wide-ranging field.