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just as war is too important to leave to the generals, science is too important to leave to scientists. Everyone needs to be attentive.”
the next Industrial Revolution “is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited.
We would be wise to remember that a society’s primary organizing principle is its monopoly on force, its ability to control its populace and export violence in the form of war.
This novel, like those that precede it, holds a light to the secret world, briefly illuminating the shadows. It is a world that few will touch or experience, a world that exists so far beneath the surface of what most consider “normal life” that they believe it to be the vision of novelists and screenwriters. But it does exist.
Klaus Schwab continues his essay on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, stating, “Modern conflicts involving states are increasingly ‘hybrid’ in nature, combining traditional battlefield techniques with elements previously associated with nonstate actors. The distinction between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant, and even violence and nonviolence (think cyberwarfare) is becoming uncomfortably blurry.”
Would the Party leadership go further? Would they push the Americans from the South China Sea and fight to extend Chinese territory all the way to Australia? That would give China control of trade routes and access to the oil and natural gas the country desperately needed to fuel its economy.
With the Americans divided at home and their leaders sending untold billions to Ukraine and Israel, he understood why his president and National Security Commission had decided that this was the time to strike.
How much had Russia, China, and Iran collaborated on plans that put him and his crew on the front lines of what was about to be the defining conflict of the twenty-first century?
“Twenty years of war has left the American public without an appetite for extended conflict and the corresponding casualties. Even more favorable to our designs is the near-total collapse of trust and confidence in their political leaders and general officers.”
“Unrestricted Warfare,” Jin said. “They even subtitled it China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, though it was certainly not that.
“Master Sun said it two thousand years ago. Fei duicheng—asymmetric means,” Jin said. “Yes, where your enemy is strong—avoid him. Where he is weak—strike.”
“David Kilcullen spells it out in The Dragons and the Snakes. He is one of the few who not only study China as an adversary but understands us as well.” “Good thing the United States is
“The Americans’ extravagance in war is akin to ‘attacking birds with golden bullets.’ That is why we will not fight them state-on-state.
“The ‘arena of war has expanded,’ and it is our adversaries who have walked right into the ambush. ‘The war will be fought and won beyond the traditional battlefield.’ We avoid our enemy’s strengths and exploit their weaknesses, of which there are many,”
“It’s a privilege to grow old, son. The aches, pains, and bruises, physical and otherwise; those checks eventually come due for us all.”
“The death of some men is useful to other men,” Jonathan said. “C. S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man. I remember. You gave me that book to read
Today, only twelve countries, not counting the Vatican, recognized Taiwan as an independent nation. Even the United States had turned on Taipei and officially recognized Beijing in 1979 with their “One China” policy.
as Master Tzu teaches us, the highest form of military victory is to defeat one’s enemy without fighting. With our asset in the White House that is exactly what we will accomplish.”
The U.S., for all their military and economic might, is dependent on China. In the end, that’s why they won’t intervene.”
“Remember the Gulf of Tonkin and WMD in Iraq. America has a history not just of miscalculation in foreign affairs but of deliberate lies to their people and the world with the goal of intervention for profit.”
“We have more indications of Iranian-backed proxies in the country; from online radicalization to illegal border crossings, there are clear signs that terrorist cells in the United States are preparing for attacks in the near term.
When I was younger and just starting out, I was passed some advice: don’t let the old man in. That’s the key.”
‘Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all…’ ” “ ‘… and you are a god,’ ” Reece said, finishing the quote.
“Hart is a man with no empathy, and men without empathy have no compassion. When they believe their power makes them a god, they also have no mercy. Be careful, Mr. Donovan. You are dealing with a sociopath.”
“The Pentagon collects about twenty-two terabytes of information every day. For reference, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, amasses four petabytes of information daily and stores it in a structure they call ‘the Hive.’ That is approximately four thousand terabytes.”
“Google collects 328 million terabytes each day,” Danreb continued. “Amazon collects the most at 184 zettabytes.”
“The sequence goes giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, and yotta,” Danreb explained. “Yoda?” “Yotta. Each one represents a thousandfold increase over the level before.”
“In the scientific community they have an adage,” Danreb interjected. “What’s that?” “ ‘What is not strictly prohibited is, in principle, possible,’ ” he said.
Even after lifting the one-child policy eight years ago, their birth rate has dropped by seventy percent.” “Seventy?” “Yes. It’s the largest birth-rate drop in recorded history. They hit peak workforce this past year; they simply can’t sustain their industrial base and economy for another decade. Even if they were reproducing, there are not enough people under age forty to have enough children to revive Chinese society.
Everything is faster at lower altitudes. It is that speed on which we have become dependent. China, on the other hand, has been launching communications, military, and spy satellites at a feverish pace, almost seventy launches per year, but they have focused on mid- and high-orbital positioning. We currently maintain a huge lead in low-earth-orbital satellites, but China is ahead in the mid to high ranges. If we lost our low-orbital satellites, so goes our advantage. But, and I’ll reiterate this, we could not even rebuild our low-orbital capability because no one would be able to put anything
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