Termination Shock

by Neal Stephenson

It was one of those insane statistics about the scale of America that had once made the United States seem like an omnipotent hyperpower and now made it seem like a beached whale.

eco-yacht.

inconceivable.

“I’m not one of those old Chinese men who is always trotting out quotations from Sun Tzu’s Art of War,” Bo said. “Tried to read it once. That guy is, what do you call it in the West? Captain Obvious.”

“Using Shock and Awe,” Pippa countered. “Anyway, we could talk about it all night,

Does that mean I oughta do nothing? When I got the means to do something?”