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Breakpoint
by Richard A Clarke
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Staff Pick
An intriguing futuristic thriller from former presidential advisor and terrorist specialist Richard A. Clarke, Breakpoint centers on the vulnerability of the global computer networks. Clarke details the potential for real terror in this fast-paced work of espionage at its finest.
Recommended by John, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews Against All Enemies warned about how we were conducting the war against terror. The Scorpion's Gate demonstrated what could happen. And now America's preeminent counterterrorism expert and #1 bestselling author shows us all...what might come next.
The global village — an intricately intertwined network of technology that binds together the world's economies, governments, and communication systems. So large, so vital — and so fragile. Now a sophisticated group is seeking to disconnect the globe-destroying computer grids, communications satellites, Internet cable centers, biotech firms. Hard to do? If only that were so.
Quickly, a dedicated team of men and women assembles to try to track the group down, searching through right-wing militias and Russian organized crime, Jihadist terrorists and enemy nation-states. But the attacks are coming more swiftly now, and growing in destructiveness. Soon, they will reach the breakpoint — and then there may be nothing anybody can do.
Reviewers everywhere praised the suspense and pace of The Scorpion's Gate, the vivid depictions of war, espionage, and bureaucracy, but most of all they hailed its authenticity. Unlike most novelists, "the man has been there and done that," said The New York Times Book Review. "Some of us," added The Washington Post, "have learned to listen when Richard A. Clarke has something to say. And we'd better hope they're listening now." Review: "Veteran counterterrorism official Clarke, author of Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror and the novel The Scorpion's Gate, proves once again that authenticity, insider information and top-secret access artfully applied trumps fancy writing with this cutting-edge, nail-biter techno-thriller set in 2012. Clarke's intriguing plot centers on the development of Living Software, a massive computer program designed to travel throughout the Internet correcting computer errors and creating software without any help or oversight from human beings. Volunteers would be connected to this program in a project aimed at reverse engineering the human brain. Added to this fascinating mix is the Transhumanist movement, whose labs grow designer children with extra chromosomes. Mysterious entities who would deny this progress are blowing up government Internet connections, killing scientists and destroying the labs participating in this research. Savvy readers will ignore the evidence that points to the obvious suspect, but still be surprised at the identity of the perpetrator when all is revealed." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Richard A. Clarke, a former presidential intelligence adviser, is now safely retired and free to define in fiction what he sees as our future enemies. His latest novel, set in 2012, is a cross between futuristic fiction and a mind-boggling whodunit. Who, by then, will be the enemy of our civilized ways? A clue lies in his dedication: 'To those who seek truth through science even when the powerful ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) try to suppress it.' Susan Connor runs a Special Projects Branch created by Rusty MacIntyre, director of the U.S. Intelligence Analysis Center. Her job 'made it exciting to go to work every day. She never knew what off-the-wall tangent Rusty would dream up next, only to have it appear in the headlines a month later.' She runs a tight ship, and reflects Clarke's distrust of sprawling bureaucracies after his own bumpy rides as an intelligence and policy adviser to four presidents, ending with George W. Bush. Susan first appears onstage at a women's crisis center where a battered wife says, 'I gots to get out of D.C.' Susan shares this sentiment when she is yanked out of her spare-time job counseling Washington's poor. Rusty needs her for an emergency meeting of top security officers baffled by 'a very well planned and sophisticated operation' of bombings and undersea explosions. Susan is told by the new director of national intelligence, Sol Rubenstein, to find out fast who is responsible. Susan protests that 'there's a whole big bureaucracy out there set up to do exactly this.' 'You mean the Keystone Kops?' asks Rubenstein. He promises that 'they'll be out there ... FBI, Homeland Security, the works. But while they're stumbling all over themselves as usual, we'll do our own ... nonconventional exploration. I need someone smart, agile, quick, and that's you.' The mysterious attacks escalate, literally, to astronomical heights when they dislocate a space satellite serving a new Internet. Before long, Susan's head is spinning as she seeks the true objectives of three-letter corporations and agencies previously unfamiliar to her. The reader might at this point suffer dizzy spells, too. Never fear. Susan will capture the hearts of even the most technologically illiterate by the way she mobilizes and directs a team of plain-spoken aides, from hackers to patriotic handymen, academics and an NYPD cop who just happens to have a wide circle of friends at the leading edge of unpublicized advances in new technologies. Susan and her assistants trawl for clues in a world choking on its own cleverness. Enormous damage has been done already, a British intelligence coordinator tells her: 'The Global Village is held together by a very few, very fragile fiber-optic strands. Cut them and the thin veneer of civilization disappears.' Using a New Galaxy satellite, the anonymous enemy strikes at U.S. power grids and underwater cables vital to the Internet. A saboteur with inside knowledge of the satellite redirects gigabits of digital packets to destinations around the globe, as if New Galaxy were an orbiting postal sorting station. Other satellites vanish, but the Defense Department 'can't fight a war without them.' Meanwhile, arsonists destroy the U.S. end of Globegrid, a project to link huge computer 'farms' of gridded supercomputers. This would 'change the world,' says one of Susan's hackers, by 'reverse engineering the human brain, downloading the brain, adding memory boards to the brain with nano, altering the genome to create a self-diagnostics and healing system.' Susan learns that computers are accelerating in capacity at such speed that their software may fix what it considers to be urgent defense, social or political threats before humans can assess the danger. The three biggest computer farms in America work with parallel farms in Japan, France and Russia — but not China — to produce one mighty virtual machine. Globegrid is then attacked by freelance Russian bombmakers, but who is paying them? Beijing, or a California-based movement with passionate objections to 'Living Software,' which downloads human thought patterns? The California protesters are led by Will Gaudium, a Napa Valley wine grower who proclaims: 'When they link up Globegrid and let Living Software run loose on it, we will cross the final barrier. We will have reached the Breakpoint!' Susan reviews all possible culprits, from China to the super-rich. But why would China destroy U.S. technology, the source of information used by Chinese scientists to overtake American technology? Or why would a man like Gaudium wreck technology that promises to take command of human evolution? The skeptical reader will be seduced by the action. Clarke whizzes from aerial laser-gun dogfights between China and Taiwan to the Bahamas, where Susan tries to rescue the extra-chromosome children of wealthy clients at a baby clinic with a secret agenda. Drawing upon stacks of current scientific research, all carefully sourced, Clarke dangles the carrot of speculation about the enemy's identity until the very end. In a final author's note, he reviews current technologies that could be used for good or for ill. As he sees it, 'sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction,' which may lead the reader to the uneasy conclusion that the real enemy is us." Reviewed by William Stevenson, whose latest book, "Spymistress," will be published in March, was a fighter pilot and served in British naval intelligence will be published in March, was a fighter pilot and served in British naval intelligence, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "Clarke's second novel employs a dizzying array of characters and locales, from Boston to Beijing to the Bahamas.... fast-paced and fascinating." Vanessa Bush, Booklist Review: "Clarke has certainly done his homework, tossing off asides on the organic evolution of technological trends from robotics and nanotechnology. Some may be confounded by this international cyber-maze, which reads more like a textbook than a novel." Kirkus Reviews Review: "Yikes! Richard A. Clarke's nail-biter suspense novel irrefutably proves that there is nothing like being America's pre-eminent counterterrorism expert to goose up your book with real terror." Vanity Fair Synopsis: America's preeminent counterterrorism expert and #1 bestselling author presents the global village — an intricately intertwined network of technology that binds together the world's economies, governments, and communication systems. Now a sophisticated group is seeking to "disconnect the globe."
About the Author Richard A. Clarke has served the past three presidents as special assistant to the president for global affairs, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, and special adviser to the president for cybersecurity.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780399153785
- Author:
- Clarke, Richard A
- Publisher:
- Putnam Publishing Group
- Author:
- Clarke, Richard A.
- Subject:
- Espionage/Intrigue
- Subject:
- Political
- Subject:
- Thrillers
- Subject:
- Terrorism
- Subject:
- Prevention
- Publication Date:
- February 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 309
- Dimensions:
- 9.28x6.30x1.12 in. 1.13 lbs.
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