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Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. —MARINERS’ PROVERB
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 National Security Act of 1947 changed the Department of War to the National Military Establishment, which was then renamed the more innocuous Department of Defense in 1949. Ironically, since its renaming, the National Military Establishment has been less about defense and more about war.
The World Economic Forum tells us we are on the verge of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Klaus Schwab, its founder and executive chairman, writes that 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.
governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure.”
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.
Though this book certainly focuses on the rapidly expanding role of technology in conflict, at its base this is a story about loyalty.
The distinction between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant, and even violence and nonviolence (think cyberwarfare) is becoming uncomfortably blurry.”
Remember, “Here be monsters.”
As of this writing, 4.2 million people hold SECRET security clearances; 1.3 million of them hold TOP SECRET clearances. In the Washington, D.C., area alone, more than 17 million square feet of space is dedicated to storing classified information.
It was time to go to war.
He also remembered the motto of the Chinese spy service: “Serve the people firmly and purely, reassure the Party, be willing to contribute, be able to fight hard and win.”
Director Howe pressed a button disconnecting the call and immediately pressed another one connecting him to the White House. “Wake up the president.”
The Underground City is a subterranean network of bunkers and tunnels built to protect not just the Chinese government, but most of the people of Beijing, at a time when war with the Soviet Union seemed imminent. Construction was ordered by Mao Zedong in 1969. The 85-square-kilometer fortress is a city beneath a city.
War will come, but it will come on a date and time of our choosing.”
the USS Reagan was the most silent and lethal boat in the water. No sub in the world could outrun, outfight, or outmaneuver her.
Instead, he fixated on a single question: Who betrayed us?
All warfare is based on deception. —SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR
Use the time you have, James. When you put down the gun, walk away. Don’t live in the past. Love your wife. Raise your kids. And don’t look back. Treasure each moment, because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
Victor Rodriguez was the director of the Agency’s Special Activities Center and was responsible for the darkest of CIA operations around the globe.
“We need to talk about Alice.”
She would be the first politician to have unfettered access to the Internet of Things.
“Unrestricted Warfare,” Jin said. “They even subtitled it China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, though it was certainly not that. The U.S. dominates in only one sphere: direct state-on-state confrontation and conflict. They neglect all other types of warfare. They are focused on battlefield dominance to the detriment of all else.” “The colonels told them that ‘nonwar’ actions were the future of warfare.” “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.”
‘An army without secret agents is exactly like a man without eyes and ears.’
“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 no longer a nation of readers.”
OVERMATCH is a clandestine military-intelligence project that integrates, first the Pacific Fleet and then all networked next-generation defense systems worldwide. That means all data linked in real time from and to submarines, airwings, aircraft battle groups, F35s, remotely piloted SR-72s, connected through dedicated satellites directly to me.”
She would spend time in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, as those states were wild cards regardless of how the people had voted recently.
His final assignment was as the deputy chief of the Central Security Service of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland. He was the second-in-command to the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the NSA. Prior to that he was the director of intelligence for the U.S. Cyber Command. They should have treated him better.
“Let’s see if he can eliminate our reporter problem and leave no trace. Make Mr. Weinberg disappear.”
“It wasn’t war. It was personal. It was hate. It was vengeance.”
“A case of Pursued by Bear cab arrived from Washington State last week a few bottles light as well.”
The lake was glass, reflecting the blood-red hues of the early morning spring sky. Red sky at morning…
There was no changing the past. But you could embrace the future.
He turned to run. Instead, the hot concussive wave of an explosion propelled him away from the plane and into the cold, dark waters of the lake.
Reece’s bloody hand wrapped around the familiar handle of his Winkler Sayoc tomahawk.
What are you going to do, Reece? I’m going to find those who did this. And then? And then I’m going to kill them all.
If one wanted to keep one’s job, and one’s head, it was best to not run afoul of the president.
Yun’s country had been preparing to bring the breakaway province back under China’s rule since 1949.
The president had publicly instructed the PLA to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.
‘Therefore a victorious army first wins and then seeks battle.’ ”
“I propose we offer him sanctuary.” “And if he doesn’t accept?” “Then we kill him.”
“Reece, go,” Katie said again. “Go and do what you do best.”
“He was a French biologist and philosopher. The collection took up most of the bookcase. He is most well known today for something he wrote in 1938 titled Pensée d’un biologist.” “Thoughts from a biologist,” Reece translated aloud. “That’s correct. In it he wrote, ‘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,’ ”
“He owns an island just off Buru called Corelena. It’s between Australia and the Philippines.”
“China is going to war.”
“The sequence goes giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, and yotta,”
‘What is not strictly prohibited is, in principle, possible,’ ”
‘One man with a rifle can change the world.’ ”
China has wanted Taiwan back since Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists fled there in 1949.
China is in their final decade as an economic power. There is nothing they can do to stop it.”
