We Are All Targets

The incredible untold origin story of cyberwar and the hackers who unleashed it on the world, tracing their journey from the ashes of the Cold War to the criminal underworld, governments, and even Silicon Valley.

 

'Extraordinary, terrifying, ground-breaking' John Sweeney

'A deeply revealing exposé disguised as a spy-thriller' Jeffrey E. Stern

'Unputdownable' Peter Pomerantsev

'A book that would be the result of Hunter S. Thompson penning an episode of Mr. Robot' Diplomatic Courier

 

It started with an email. A message from an anonymous sender landed in journalist Matt Potter's inbox with a top-secret NATO battle plan attached - and Matt was quickly taken in for questioning by MI5 as a suspected spy.

But Matt had done nothing wrong - he just received an email - and he wanted to know what had happened. How had he got the document? Who sent it to him? And why?

And so began a twenty-year investigation into the origins of cyberwar and how it came to dominate the world we think we know.

The result is We Are All Targets, an extraordinary story that winds through the last days of the Cold War, Balkan hacking culture, Russia, Silicon Valley and the Pentagon.

It stars a celebrity hacker with missing fingers who keeps escaping from prison, FBI agents chasing the first generation of cyber mercenaries, Russian generals obsessed with a Cold War rematch, and global mafias rushing to exploit the limitless opportunities created by a fully connected world - and brings us into the here-and-now with Ukraine and the world's first Department of Meme Warfare.

This is the riveting secret history of cyberwar not as governments want it to be - controlled, military-directed, discreet and sophisticated - but as it really is: anarchic, chaotic, dangerous and often thrilling, and how we are all targets, whether we like it or not.