Full Stack Spies

Description

Even the most elite hackers use common technologies to steal state secrets, which help intelligence agencies to catch them. Are these hackers simply reckless, or do their operations reveal something deeper about their nation-state patrons?

Over a globally interconnected Internet, nations must constantly toe the delicate line of maintaining stability–developing shared tech protocols that they themselves must also break, in order to spy. This is the paradox at the heart of cyber espionage: states need to cooperate if they are to compete. As the US and China vie for strategic advantage through a new form of statecraft in cyber space, an intensifying cat-and-mouse game makes cyber security more difficult, more expensive and more unpredictable for us all.

Full Stack Spies examines the dynamic, interdependent relationships that hackers, cyber defenders, tech giants and nation states forge, leverage and exploit to amass cyber power against a wide range of targets in geopolitics, global trade and finance, the armed forces, and critical infrastructure. But this jostling for cyber dominance makes spying online harder–and, more crucially, undermines long-term trust in cyber space, destabilising the foundations of digital societies.

Reviews

‘This deeply research booked shows how great power competition in the digital age call into question established concepts of strategic stability with grave implications for liberal democracies.’ — Nigel Inkster, author of The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy

‘A compelling and timely exploration of contemporary cyber statecraft, showing how China and Russia weaponise digital infrastructure to challenge Western power.’ — Alexander Evans, Associate Dean for Strategic Development, London School of Economics, and former UK diplomat

‘Engaging, ambitious and compellingly written, it is rare to see something both this detailed and this up-to-date. A “must-buy”.’ — Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer in Digital Methods, University of Edinburgh, and author of Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

Author(s)

Ahana Datta Fasel is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College London. Advising governments and companies globally on their cyber defence strategies, she is a trustee at Privacy International and is on the strategic advisory board of UK Research and Innovation. Previously the Financial Times’ cyber chief, she has held multiple senior roles in the UK government, serving the Ministry of Justice, the Cabinet Office and the National Cyber Security Centre. Her editorials have been published in the Financial Times and Columbia Journalism Review. She holds a PhD from University College London.