Cold War with China

Dmitri Alperovitch made his name in the cybersecurity field, where he made it his focus to learn about and fight back against the cyber attackers rather than deal with cybersecurity threats as technical issues to be solved. He co-founded and served as the Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike, Inc., one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies.

In this book Alperovitch has partnered with Garrett Graff, the journalist and author / co-author of several books, including Dawn of the Code War, billed as “the inside story of how America’s enemies launched a cyber war against us-and how we’ve learned to fight back.”

I suspect it was Alperovitch who provided the expertise, while Graff helped shape the book into a narrative that is surprisingly engaging and readable.

The key idea of the book is that it is China, not Russia, that poses the greatest threat to the United States and the current world order. Alperovitch charts the rise of China, with the help of the US. In dealing with China after the fall of the Soviet Union, America was operating in what it hoped was a new paradigm. The US felt that if it helped China rise and build a capitalist economy that it would inevitably also rise to embrace the democratic standards of the rest of the world. A key result of the thinking within that paradigm, and a mistake in Alperovitch’s telling, came with the acceptance of China into the World Trade Organization. That step allowed China’s economy to boom while placing no limits on its global ambitions.

Both China and Russia have used industrial espionage and cyber thievery against the US to strengthen their economies. But China has proven much more successful in transforming itself. As it has done so it has grown its military and also tried to exert itself as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

China’s Belt and Road initiative offered funding for major economic projects for poorer countries. While it has had some success with that, it has also inspired backlash both with the US and with the countries it has ostensibly tried to help. Belt and Road funding is provided in the form of loans, which have weakened instead of strengthened some countries, and the projects China has funded seem to benefit China most.

China has become increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, pushing its Navy into conflicts with neighbors Japan and the Philippines, as it establishes beachheads in an effort to strengthen its control of what it considers its home waters.

But it’s China’s ambitions over the island of Taiwan that loom as an increasingly real threat to the world order, and Alperovich systematically works through what a potential invasion of Taiwan by China would mean geopolitically, and why it is best for the US to take steps to deter such an invasion.

Deterrence will require other steps to be taken, including strengthening our alliances to counter Chinese influence, creating stronger economic ties with other Asian and South Asian countries, and furthering the entanglement of the US and its allies with China to make disengagement by China more difficult.

At 400 pages long the book is thorough but not exhaustive. You get a good sense of who Alperovitch is, and what expertise he brings to the discussion, that helps to bolster the arguments he makes. The result is a book that is both informative and enjoyable.

RATING: Five Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: The book is well written and provides a solid strategy for the US to counter Chinese power and deter China from making moves against Taiwan, moves that threaten to destabilize the world. The book is a call to action and, if you are interested in geopolitics at all, is a must read.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advanced review copy provided through NetGalley and PublicAffairs, the book’s publisher.