WORK IN PROGRESS
In The Hacker And The State author Ben Buchanan gives the reader an overview about the influence of cyber operations on the worlds politics. To do this, the author looks at past operations and their consequences. The book does a good job in showing possibilities and limits of cyber operations and leaves the reader with a more informed opinion about his topic. The book is interesting for anyone interested in geopolitics and doesn’t require any technical knowledge.
The book is structured in the three parts espionage, attack and destabilization. For each of these parts the author selected 4-5 past cyber operations and analyses them. His focus always lays on describing the operation, showing its consequences and predicting if these align with the intent behind the operation. As a lot of the operations are confidential to nations intelligence services, the author has to rely on open sources, whic are provided throughout the text. Especially while analyising the intent of an operation, the author has to formulate an opinion and not facts. (This is NOT a bad thing, but should be kept in mind while reading the book)
One of the main topics of the book is the distinction of operations between shaping and signaling, two terms used in statescraft. Shaping is meant to “change the game” by directly interfering with an adversary, while Sginaling is meant to “hint credibly” at power and consequences to influence an adversary.
I want to highlight three of the operations analysed in the book:
#TODO
#TODO
#TODO
#TODO The different cyber operations all show, that hacking is already a really important tool in geopolitics, that cahnges the status quo. While the former western elite is already actively using cyber operations, even small countries like North Korea or Iran or even criminal groups can shape the actions of the world. On the other hand, cyber operations are definitely limited in their impact.