The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace

by Alexander Klimburg

Overview

“A prescient and important book. . . . Fascinating.”—The New York Review of Books


No single invention of the last half century has changed the way we live now as much as the Internet. Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared and new freedoms found and enjoyed. Two decades later, the future isn’t so bright any more: increasingly, the Internet is used as a weapon and a means of domination by states eager to exploit or curtail global connectivity in order to further their national interests.
 
Klimburg is a leading voice in the conversation on the implications of this dangerous shift, and in The Darkening Web, he explains why we underestimate the consequences of states’ ambitions to project power in cyberspace at our peril: Not only have hacking and cyber operations fundamentally changed the nature of political conflict—ensnaring states in a struggle to maintain a precarious peace that could rapidly collapse into all-out war—but the rise of covert influencing and information warfare has enabled these same global powers to create and disseminate their own distorted versions of reality in which anything is possible. At stake are not only our personal data or the electrical grid, but the Internet as we know it today—and with it the very existence of open and democratic societies.
 
Blending anecdote with argument, Klimburg brings us face-to-face with the range of threats the struggle for cyberspace presents, from an apocalyptic scenario of debilitated civilian infrastructure to a 1984-like erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Focusing on different approaches to cyber-conflict in the US, Russia and China, he reveals the extent to which the battle for control of the Internet is as complex and perilous as the one surrounding nuclear weapons during the Cold War—and quite possibly as dangerous for humanity as a whole.

Authoritative, thought-provoking, and compellingly argued, The Darkening Web makes clear that the debate about the different aspirations for cyberspace is nothing short of a war over our global values.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735222830
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	1,131,962
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alexander Klimburg is a program director at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an associate and former fellow at the Belfer Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. He has acted as an advisor to a number of governments and international organizations on cybersecurity strategy and internet governance, and has participated in various national, international, NATO and EU policy groups. He splits his time between Boston, Vienna and The Hague.

Table of Contents

Note on Terms xi

Introduction 1

Part I

1 The Body of Cyber 23

2 Mind over Matter 53

Part II

3 Everyone Can Be a God 69

4 Ruling the Domain 87

5 Pin-Striped Cyber… 117

Part III

6 No One but US 133

7 Attack to Excess 159

8 Strategic Innuendo 185

Part IV

9 Russia's Invisible War 205

10 Of Siloviki and Cyber Crime 225

11 Pwnage Diplomacy 243

Part V

12 The Chinese Cyber Dream 253

13 Manning the Great Firewall 265

14 Handling the Barbarians 275

Part VI

15 Parsing Cyber Power 301

16 The Great Cyber Game 315

17 An End-to-End World 347

Conclusion 357

Epilogue 367

Afterword 371

Acknowledgments 385

Notes 387

Index 425

Editorial Reviews

A prescient and important book. . . . Fascinating.”—The New York Review of Books

“Klimburg’s book is a plea for cyber-sanity, but it is also a chilling read.”—The Sunday Times (UK)
 
“It’s this type of worldwide cyber-chaos—the type that could down airplanes, turn off respirators and plunge millions into darkness—that Alexander Klimburg warns of in The Darkening Web. . . . Klimburg’s warnings regarding Russian cyber-aspirations. . . are on the money.”—The New Scientist

“A quietly horrifying new book. . . . The Darkening Web eventually accumulates the picture of an impending apocalypse, an utterly unwinnable war in which the world’s few good guys. . . are outgunned, outspent, and outmaneuvered at every stage of what Klimburg refers to as the great cyber game.”—The Christian Science Monitor
 
“Readers will take much from the author’s considerable expertise, clear and explanatory prose, and breadth of discussion. . . . Klimburg adds to the growing literature of clear-eyed, authoritative authors who doubtless are shaping debate on how governments, corporations, and individuals should begin to understand the evolution of the internet and those who would use it to carry out cyberattacks.”—The Washington Free Beacon

“An extraordinarily informative and accessible examination of the threats to physical infrastructure, privacy and the free flow of information posed by the struggle for control of cyberspace. Ripped from yesterday’s—and tomorrow’s—headlines, The Darkening Web shines a spotlight on a vitally important and little understood threat.”—The Tulsa World

“The Darkening Web provides a sweeping yet nuanced overview of how we got to where we are online, with ample backstory… A thoughtful framework for assessing developments in this fast-moving area…Ultimately, Klimburg concludes, the battle for a free Internet ‘is nothing less than the struggle for the heart of modern democratic society.’”—Nature 

“Exhaustively researched. . . . A complex, fascinating book. . . . Indispensable reading for anyone keen to understand what lies ahead as cyberspace displaces conventional battlefields as the preferred venue for resolving conflict.”—The Toronto Star

“A dark but riveting account of how competition between nations threatens the future of the Internet. Klimburg provides a broad overview of the technical and political underpinnings of the Internet and reveals how many of them are being eroded by short-sightedness and national pride. A must-read.”—Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat and DEF CON conferences

“A compelling and authoritative book that will shape the conversation about the intersection of the Internet and foreign policy.”—Bruce Schneier, author of Data and Goliath

“At a time of rising focus on threats to the internet, Alexander Klimburg introduces much needed clarity and precision into such concepts as cyber war and information security. This book is indispensable—not only for national security officials formulating policies on cyber conflict, cyber crime and cyber governance, but for any reader seeking a strong grounding in this critically important material and what it means for our global future.”—Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

“Alexander Klimburg provides a chilling but well-informed and readable tour of cyber interdependence. Anyone interested in our growing global vulnerabilities should read this book.”—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and author of The Future of Power

“Klimburg is exceedingly qualified to write about cyberspace as a new field of war. . . . The dark side of cyberspace is a daunting subject, but Klimburg’s narrative is very accessible, and frankly, this is all far too important to ignore.”—Booklist 

“A very frightening book. . . . Reading it is well worth the effort. Recommended for anyone interested in international affairs.”—Library Journal

“An excellent primer on cyberwarfare. . . . A chilling portrait of the emergence of cyberspace as a domain for political conflict.”—Publishers Weekly

“Klimburg delivers an urgent warning that civil libertarians and cybernauts alike will want to heed.” – Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

05/22/2017
The complex art of cyberwarfare and its global arena get a thorough examination by Klimburg, a cybersecurity expert at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. After an accessible explanation of the origins and underpinnings of the internet, Klimburg segues to an in-depth discussion of the major players in cyberwarfare—primarily the United States, Russia, and China—and then discusses his vision and fears for the future, depicting a chilling portrait of the interdependency of the cyberspace and its emergence as a domain for political conflict. Once Klimburg moves into policy and theory, his arguments get a little more abstract and may fly over the heads of those less grounded in the matter; he admits as much with a nod to the “virtual cyber veil of esoteric detail and complexity that has traditionally made this topic difficult even for experienced policy makers to grasp.” The book serves as an excellent primer on cyberwarfare, especially useful in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as accusations of Russian interference continue to make headlines. (July)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2017
Klimburg (program director, Hague Ctr. for Strategic Studies) lays out in detail the perils posed by our growing dependence upon the Internet and warns how much more dangerous the situation may become. Starting with an explanation of how cyberspace works—from the hardware to the layers of software to the social interactions of users—he describes many points of system vulnerability. Klimburg recounts the history of attacks in which hackers have disabled portions of infrastructure, compromised data security, and influenced social and political behavior. Moreover, he indicates that the events known to the public represent only a fraction of the number of actual occurrences. The author asserts that cyberwarfare may be the greatest threat to democracy around the world and that the United States is being outperformed in both offensive and defensive activities by rivals Russia and China. In short, this is a very frightening book. Although parts of this title can be heavy going, reading it is well worth the effort. VERDICT Recommended for anyone interested in international affairs.—Harold D. Shane, Mathematics Emeritus, Baruch Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal

2017-05-02
Of the free internet and its discontents, who are many and powerful."Governments did not make the Internet," writes cybersecurity strategist Klimburg, the program director at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies. Never mind that the backbone of the internet was in fact the creation of scientists working under the American government, the fact remains that entrepreneurs, cyberpioneers, techno-anarchists, hackers, and other such independent-minded spirits have been the chief engineers of a place where pretty much anything goes. Those days may be coming to an end, Klimburg warns, as governments and corporations seek increasingly to control the internet, both to monitor the behavior of users and to seize the broadcast capabilities of the medium to serve up state propaganda. The United States, writes the author, has long held that the internet is "a largely non-state domain" that works pretty well as it is, while such governments as Putin's Russia believe that they should control their own portions of the Web, a position that China and much of the developing world also seems to hold—though, Klimburg notes, powers such as India and Brazil seem to be moving away from it, even as efforts are mounting in the U.S. to restrict online freedom. Given the "great cyber game" that is raging among state powers—witness the role of Russian hackers in recent elections outside Russia—and these efforts at control, the author foresees the possibility that much online activity may move to the "dark web," where criminality and illegality may in turn corrupt the free internet. He argues that the present multistakeholder approach to internet governance is the best of all possible cyberworlds, and he recommends the formation of a kind of organization akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to represent these many constituencies while allowing for internet independence and a fully engaged fight against cyberinstability. Klimburg delivers an urgent warning that civil libertarians and cybernauts alike will want to heed.

Kirkus Reviews