Corera’s perspective, both informed and directed by his identity as a Brit, means that this isn’t the same old story.Įven as he maintains authorial neutrality, he makes observations that don’t seem to occur to American authors in quite the same way. And while Americans did, indeed, create the internet as we know it today, the history of computers and cyber-security isn’t an American-only topic. If you read about the history of computers for long enough, eventually you start to the see the patterns and the same names over and over. What does digital privacy mean to our lives? What are we willing to trade for it?Īnother interesting aspect of Corera’s work is that we get a British perspective on things, which is a refreshing change of pace. Corera’s work offers up the information in a careful, thoughtful way, and invites us to draw our own conclusions.

And for an issue as contentious as cyber-security, surveillance, spying, and information, it’s a rare treasure to not have politics get in the way of the presentation of the facts. Does he think Snowden is a traitor or a hero? Are groups like the NSA doing necessary work or have they become the latest incarnation of the Stasi?īased on the book alone, it’s impossible to say. By the end of the book, I couldn’t suss out author Gordon Corera’s allegiances on the privacy vs. Most importantly, however, it is neutral. It’s comprehensive, leaving you with the sense of no stone having been left unturned. “Cyberspies” is exhaustive, but in the way that climbing a mountain is exhaustive, where the reward is worth the effort. Using unique access to the NSA, GCHQ, Chinese officials, and senior executives from some of the most powerful global technology companies, Gordon Corera has gathered compelling stories from heads of state, hackers, and spies of all stripes.Cyberspies is a groundbreaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, international business, science, and technology collide.Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage by Gordon Corera The book is rich with historical detail and characters, as well as astonishing revelations about espionage carried out in recent times by the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. Corera's compelling narrative takes us from the Second World War through the Cold War and the birth of the Internet to the present era of hackers and surveillance.

The previously untold-and previously highly classified-story of the conflux of espionage and technology, a compelling narrative rich with astonishing revelations taking readers from World War II to the Internet ageAs the digital era becomes increasingly pervasive, the intertwining forces of computers and espionage are reshaping the entire world what was once the preserve of a few intelligence agencies now affects us all.

Cyberspies by Gordon Corera