Executive Summary & Book Critique: The Hacked World Order (Essay Sample)

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The Hacked World Order
Executive Summary
In the book The Hacked World Order, Adam Segal explores how nations have utilized the web to wage wars against each other. He describes the period from June 2012 to June 2013 clarifying how countries leveraged the cyberspace to reassert their control over the flow of information in the search for power, wealth, and influence. Furthermore, he shows how countries managed to utilize the web to combat countries that they considered as adversaries. In his book, Segal clearly indicates how countries have used the Internet to destroy, protect, or build relations with others.
In addition, the book identifies the extent to which nations have been spying on others. Segal explains that more than forty-one countries run cyber warfare doctrines. Further, the author states that the United States spends more on cyber offenses than it spends on cyber defense. Segal indicates that the countries such as Israel, Russia, and the United Kingdom have dedicated tremendous resources to form cyberspace operation centers. He shows that some of these countries spend as much money on cyber warfare as they spend on their other military units such as the air force and navy.
The book also analyzes the Stuxnet Malware that was developed by Israel and American cyberspace armies to destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment program, by causing programs to malfunction and others to self-destruct. In addition, Segal discusses the dangers posed by hacking to security, economic well-being, and privacy. He also considers the effects of propaganda that is spread on Twitter and other social networking sites to global peace.
Evaluation of the Book
Segal asserts that slight progress has been made in the development of laws that govern the use of state sponsored hacking. The author suggests that state sponsored hacking should be treated as illegal and should be punishable by law. However, Segal’s assertion that all levels of hacking are crimes is improper. Some countries such as the United States have heavily relied on hacking to identify and pursue criminals (Segal 128). At the same time, individuals such as Jack Snowden utilized hacking to expose corruption and other wrongs that governments do (Bauman 6). Therefore, arguing that any type of hacking is a criminal act is inappropriate since some forms of hacking are beneficial. Segal states that spying has a very slight effect on international politics unless such intrusion becomes public. However, spying on other nations, especially ones that are viewed as development partners or friends, is not right. Therefore, asserting that spying is correct as long as the public is not aware is not appropriate. Firstly, it is the right of every citizen to know what their government is doing. Secondly, if the friendly countries discover that they are being spied on, then a subtle difference could arise (Cohen et al. 28). For example, when Germany found out that the United States was spying it, the German considered it as a breach of friendship and lack of mutual respect.
Segal notes that cyber-attacks are only political games and do not have any serious consequences to the nations that are involved. On the contrary, assuming cyber-attacks to be similar to political games is inappropriate. With cyber-attacks, many factors are at stake. In addition, there are instances where governments spend enormous amounts of money to develop new technology. However, through cyber attacks, such technologies may be stolen, despite their high research and development costs (Taylor et al. 4). Therefore, cyber-attacks cannot be considered as mere political games; rather, they should be regarded as risks that may cause tremendous losses to a nation.
Segal claims that the Chinese government sponsors many attacks towards the United States. Further, he asserts that in 2015, the attacks were so severe that the US president had to visit China to discuss the issue with the Chinese president (Brenner & Channel 16). However, it may be an assumption since there was no clear indication that the US president reviewed the matter of cyber security or attacks with his Chinese counterpart. The leaders may have addressed other issues such as their trade that would be considered as more important to the public.
The biggest problem that is attributed to the Internet is the inability to determine ...