When you think of a hacker, you might think of a basement-dwelling computer whiz, or a Russian intelligence agent sowing digital chaos. Or the protagonists of high-tech thrillers like The Matrix. But that’s not entirely accurate, says Bruce Schneier, a Harvard professor specializing in cybersecurity. In his view, a hack is anything that subverts the rules or intentions of a system while still being permitted by the system, and a hacker is anyone commits these hacks. Tax loopholes are a hack. Gerrymandering is a hack. Or, as he puts in the introduction: Remember those ant farms you had when you were a kid, how the ants weren’t included and you had to send away for them? A normal person sees the address to write to and says “Cool, that’s how I get my ants.” A hacker sees that and says, “Cool, that’s how I mail a bunch of ants to my unsuspecting enemies.”

So just who are these hackers? Usually, they’re the rich and powerful. As I stated earlier, the wealthy can use their knowledge of the tax code to exploit it, or just use their wealth to hire lawyers and accounts to do the exploiting for them. Majority parties in legislative bodies can use their power and knowledge of the system to change parliamentary procedure. This allows them to stay in power through tools such as gerrymandering or the filibuster. Hacking can even form a vicious cycle of exploitation. Suppose those aforementioned wealthy individuals lobby those aforementioned politicians to codify their tax loopholes ensuring their quasi-legal trickery becomes the law of the land, forcing the rest of us to pick up the slack. As Schneier shows us, the aristocracy, policymakers, and the clergy have been hacking systems for their own gain throughout history. And it gets worse! Advancements in the rapidly developing and unregulated field of Artificial Intelligence means that pretty soon machines will be hacking us and our systems. Not in a doomsday Terminator-type way, but in a “scam you by taking advantage of your knowledge and trust” kind of a way.

So for an overview on all the ways in which you are being hacked, and the ways in which society can prevent these types of hack from happening, read A Hacker’s Mind.

I expected a book about how computer programs have been and could be hacked but it soon expanded the definition of hacking into a cautionary tale about how regulations, laws, and social systems can be hacked for financial gain and power.
Thanks to W. W. Norton and NetGalley for this ARC to review.