Dmitri Alperovitch made his name in the cybersecurity field, where he made it his focus to learn about and fight back against the cyber attackers rather than deal with cybersecurity threats as technical issues to be solved. He co-founded and served as the Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike, Inc., one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies.

In this book Alperovitch has partnered with Garrett Graff, the journalist and author / co-author of several books, including Dawn of the Code War, billed as “the inside story of how America’s enemies launched a cyber war against us-and how we’ve learned to fight back.”

I suspect it was Alperovitch who provided the expertise, while Graff helped shape the book into a narrative that is surprisingly engaging and readable.

The key idea of the book is that it is China, not Russia, that poses the greatest threat to the United States and the current world order. Alperovitch charts the rise of China, with the help of the US. In dealing with China after the fall of the Soviet Union, America was operating in what it hoped was a new paradigm. The US felt that if it helped China rise and build a capitalist economy that it would inevitably also rise to embrace the democratic standards of the rest of the world. A key result of the thinking within that paradigm, and a mistake in Alperovitch’s telling, came with the acceptance of China into the World Trade Organization. That step allowed China’s economy to boom while placing no limits on its global ambitions.

Both China and Russia have used industrial espionage and cyber thievery against the US to strengthen their economies. But China has proven much more successful in transforming itself. As it has done so it has grown its military and also tried to exert itself as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

China’s Belt and Road initiative offered funding for major economic projects for poorer countries. While it has had some success with that, it has also inspired backlash both with the US and with the countries it has ostensibly tried to help. Belt and Road funding is provided in the form of loans, which have weakened instead of strengthened some countries, and the projects China has funded seem to benefit China most.


China has become increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, pushing its Navy into conflicts with neighbors Japan and the Philippines, as it establishes beachheads in an effort to strengthen its control of what it considers its home waters.

But it’s China’s ambitions over the island of Taiwan that loom as an increasingly real threat to the world order, and Alperovich systematically works through what a potential invasion of Taiwan by China would mean geopolitically, and why it is best for the US to take steps to deter such an invasion.

Deterrence will require other steps to be taken, including strengthening our alliances to counter Chinese influence, creating stronger economic ties with other Asian and South Asian countries, and furthering the entanglement of the US and its allies with China to make disengagement by China more difficult.


At 400 pages long the book is thorough but not exhaustive. You get a good sense of who Alperovitch is, and what expertise he brings to the discussion, that helps to bolster the arguments he makes. The result is a book that is both informative and enjoyable.

The book is well written and provides a solid strategy for the US to counter Chinese power and deter China from making moves against Taiwan, moves that threaten to destabilize the world. The book is a call to action and, if you are interested in geopolitics at all, is a must read.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advanced review copy provided through NetGalley and PublicAffairs, the book’s publisher.

RATING: Five Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A wonderful book about the state of American national security; thanks for creating an interest to explore further.

At this time it may look to most people of the world that the 21st century will be the "Chinese Century". Over the last thirty years, The PRC (The People' Republic of China" has expanded its' economy to be the second largest in the World and as per Chairman Xi, it will surpass the US to be the biggest and strongest in the world. In many ways the PRC has surpassed the US in the production and manufacturer of middle size manufactures and thereby made that production to be uneconomical. As these industries have been shut down in the US and moved overseas, our ability to manufacture many products has been damaged.

So what can the US do to prevent China from moving into that position? Taiwan is the manufacturer of 90% of all the advanced silicon chips in the world. But China has been stealing 'Intellectual properties for years and is currently beginning to produce lower level "chips" and planning on upgrading their production to advanced chips. The "Belts and Roads" (B&R) initiatives have built roads, high speed train rails and deep water container ports. China knows that these third world countries will never be able to repay China for these facilities and the longer the money is owed, the more control China accumulates.

There is though a set of problems for the PRC/CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Most of these countries understand that along with the infrastructure assistance comes other agencies that are run by the MSS (Ministry of Security Service). The MSS spends its; time working its' way in to bureaucracy of whatever country they're in, spying on the governments and people of the country while creating double agents and collaborators who feed info to the MSS. There is no way of knowing what information is compromised by the MSS.

Some countries that have accepted the largess of the PRC have begun to complain about the quality of the infrastructure that have been built by the B&R and that promises of the transfer of/ and education for their people has not been forthcoming. Things are built that at this time can only be run by the B&R people. But China is facing a problem that even they can't fix quickly.

Like every country that has created a large middle class they find that the number of young people needed to be educated to take over critical systems in the future are lacking. Because of the one-child policy the CCP instituted from 1979 to 2015, their ‘young’ cohorts are skewed to males, leaving less women to give birth to the next generation. Also, this new generation of women doesn’t want to waste their educational opportunities by having children and being forced out of the workforce.

This ‘lost’ generation will also make it difficult for China to fill quotas for the military and the CCP itself.