P.W. Singer > Quotes

“He compared the intelligence task to solving a jigsaw puzzle, except that you didn’t get the box cover, so you didn’t know what the final picture was. And you got only a few pieces at a time, not all of them. And even worse, you always got a bunch of pieces from some other puzzle thrown in.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“Do you know what is America’s greatest export?” Links’s eyes narrowed. “Biggest, or greatest? Sometimes they’re not the same thing. Biggest by the numbers? Oil and gas. Greatest? Democracy,” said Links. “No, no, no,” said Sechin. “It is an idea, really. A dream: Star Trek.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“again: I live in lonely desolation, And wonder when my end will come.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“Another way of thinking about it is that Kurzweil and others are arguing that my generation will be the last generation of humans to be the smartest thing on the planet. “Generation X” takes on a whole new meaning.”
― P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®

“In 2010, McAfee thought it impressive that it was discovering a new specimen of malware every fifteen minutes. In 2013, it was discovering one every single second!”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®

“Americans had an apt phrase to describe a situation like ours, where your strength grows but your options become ever more limited: Manifest Destiny. “Destiny drives you forward but ties your hands. Indeed,”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“they also all knew from experience that the best way to accomplish something considered undoable was merely to bring the right minds together.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“Whenever they spoke, most of us would just keep quiet, nod our heads, and put on what author Mark Bowden calls “the glaze.” This is the “unmistakable look of profound confusion and disinterest that takes hold whenever conversation turns to workings of a computer.”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®

“Does a retweet actually mean endorsement? For Dion Nissenbaum, the answer to this question landed him in a Turkish prison.”
― P.W. Singer, Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

“You can fight a war for a long time or you can make your nation strong.
You cannot do both. —SUN-TZU, THE ART OF WAR”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“access readers that require supposedly unique fingerprints have been fooled by forged fingerprints pressed into Gummy Bear candy,”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®

“Although these firms deploy units that are often much smaller in manpower relative to their client’s adversaries, their effectiveness lies not in their size, but in their comprehensive training, experience, and overall skill at battlefield judgment, all in fundamentally short supply in the chaotic battlefields of the last decade.14 Utilizing coordinated movement and intelligent application of firepower, their strength is their ability to arrive at the right place at the right moment. The fundamental reality of modern warfare is that in many cases such small tactical units can achieve strategic goals.”
― P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

“How do you police an empire when you’ve got a shrinking economy relative to the world’s and a population no longer so excited to meet those old commitments?”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“the New York Times predicted that “the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years.” That same day, two brothers who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio started assembling the very first airplane, which would fly just a few weeks later.”
― P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

“When someone engages in the spread of lies, hate, and other societal poisons, they should be stigmatized accordingly. It is not just shameful but dangerous that the purveyors of the worst behaviors on social media have enjoyed increased fame and fortune, all the way up to invitations to the White House. Stopping these bad actors requires setting an example and ensuring that repeat offenders never escape the gravity of their past actions and are excluded from the institutions and platforms of power that now matter most in our society.”
― P.W. Singer, Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

“In our daily lives, all of us must recognize that the intent of most online content is to subtly influence and manipulate.”
― P.W. Singer, Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

“Never go into battle with a bot you can’t trust and never trust a bot you don’t know how to snuff out.”
― P.W. Singer, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution

“But finding bad chips was actually even harder than that, as they activated only in the presence of a combination of an unknown frequency and an encrypted transmittal message.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“The worst the ships could do was torpedo a great white shark that had eaten too many license plates.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“Sometimes I think that the situation in the country could improve if internet access was cut,” Lamloum wrote. “Then people would no longer have access to rumors, which represent roughly 90 percent of information that’s out there.”
― P.W. Singer, Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

“The ability to transform money rapidly into force returns the international system to the dangers of lowered costs of war.31 A new international market of private military services means that economic power is now more threatening.”
― P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

“Werner Heisenberg was, of course, thinking in the realm of physics and string theory, but the lesson also holds true here. In any interrogation, there is an observer effect, where the mere act of someone watching has an effect on the subject.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“America now had a new kind of logistical backbone the likes of which had never before been seen in war.”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“The firm’s employees play active roles alongside those of the client, but in a way designed to make the overall combination more effective. Typically, their employees provide either specialized capabilities too cost-prohibitive for the local force to develop on its own (such as flying advanced fighter jets or operating artillery control systems), or they may be distributed across the forces of the client, in order to provide general leadership and experience to a greater number of individual units.”
― P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

“Just because someone is young doesn't mean the person automatically has an understanding of the key issues. Cybersecurity is one of those areas that has been left to only the most technically inclined to worry [...] Anything related to the digital world or 0s and 1s was an issue just for computer scientists and the IT helpdesk. Whenever they spoke, most of us would just keep quiet, nod our heads, and put on what author Mark Bowden calls 'the glaze'. [...] The glaze is the face you put on when you only call something 'stuff'.”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know

“Aboye,”
― P.W. Singer, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

“Sagan was perhaps the most eloquent harbinger because his concern came from a place of deep understanding: ‘I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
― P.W. Singer, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution

“Surprise long-range helicopter assault operations against targets deep within enemy territory, supported by the ground attack aircraft, became a hallmark of EO operations, as did the use of pinpoint suppressive fire with mortars and follow-up pursuit of ambushes.”
― P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

“Our most senior leaders, now in their 60s and 70s, likely didn't even become familiar with computers until well into their careers, and many still today have only the most limited experience with them.
As late as 2001 the director of the FBI did not have a computer in his office. While the Secretary of US Defense had his secretary to print out his emails to him, write his response in pen, and then had the assistant type them back in.”
― P.W. Singer, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know