This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

This was a depressing read, even if much of it covered ground I’ve read about before.

My first impression was that barely 30 pages in, the demeaning descriptions given of stereotypical hacker appearance, mannerisms, and interests were incredibly off-putting. Perhaps she was trying to add color to the personalities, but I did not appreciate that. Fortunately it subsided the partway through the book.

My thoughts were as follows:

1. This book is extremely U.S. focused.
2. Oh look, another example of taxpayer money being used for nefarious purposes (buying zero days).
3. The Internet + hardware complexity is a double edged sword for recon.
4. The human element (in spycraft) still matters.
5. “Snowden was a low-level admin. The NSA’s capabilities were far, far more expansive than what Snowden had revealed.” - former TAO hacker.
6. People who do dumb tech things (the weakest link) also happens at the government level, but with much more severe consequences.
7. Google, Facebook and especially the iPhone changed the game.
8. “Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, would later tell me, “In looking at any computers of consequence—in government, in Congress, at the Department of Defense, aerospace, companies with valuable trade secrets-we've not examined one yet that has not been infected,” by China."”
9. The reason the US is paranoid about Huawei or TikTok, etc, is because the US has hacked everything, so they know/assume China has too. It’s projection, but it’s also documented.
10. Russian grid hack access is the equivalent of the spiderman pointing meme. Stuxnet was the US pointing first, the Ukraine attacks are Russia pointing at the US. You touch us we do this to you.