The Perfect Weapon

War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

For 70 years, the thinking inside the Pentagon was that only nations with nuclear weapons could threaten America’s existence. But that assumption is now in doubt: in a world in which almost everything is interconnected – phones, cars, electrical grids, and satellites – everything can be disrupted, if not destroyed. In THE PERFECT WEAPON, Belfer Center Senior Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy David Sanger, the New York Times national security correspondent, details how this new revolution, being conducted largely in secret, is reshaping global power.

“Cyberweapons are so cheap to develop and so easy to hide that they have proven irresistible for large and small powers alike,” Sanger writes. “Because such attacks rarely leave smoking ruins, Washington remains befuddled about how to respond. Our adversaries have realized that it’s a great way to undercut us without being made to pay any real price for such actions.”

Focusing largely on the “Seven Sisters” of cyber conflict – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Iran, Israel, and North Korea – THE PERFECT WEAPON is the dramatic story of how cyber conflict has expanded since the revelation of the American/Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.