Cyberwars

Despite the breathless, sky-is-falling tone of much of this book--especially its oft-stated and overhyped message that WWIII will take place on the ""virtual"" battlefield of cyberspace--Guisnel's English-language debut clearly maps the terrain of the Internet ""warzone"" and provides a solid overview of the many thorny questions swirling around digital privacy and property rights. A journalist for the conservative French weekly Le Point and the author of several books on the intelligence community, Guisnel neatly describes the wide range of espionage activity on the Web. He begins with the National Security Agency's highly controversial and unsuccessful effort to require the insertion of an anti-encryption chip in all new communications equipment, and continues into the cloak-and-dagger world of industrial spying. Some of this material is fascinating. For example, in the 1980s the French government placed operatives in several U.S. high-tech companies. These operatives then funneled the results of very expensive research and development information back to competing French firms. While such incidents are gripping, the highly episodic structure of the book makes its wealth of well-documented information difficult to digest. Guisnel can get caught in sticky technical details, such as the role of cryptology in modern communications. Such lapses highlight the book's main problem: while it is a useful introduction to the politics of information exchange, it lacks a compelling central argument. (Oct.)