This Is How They Tell Me the World Will End: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award * Bronze Medal, Arthur Ross Book Award (Council on Foreign Relations)

＂Part John le Carré and more parts Michael Crichton . . . spellbinding.＂ The New Yorker

＂Written in the hot, propulsive prose of a spy thriller＂ (The New York Times), the untold story of the cyberweapons market--the most secretive, government-backed market on earth--and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.

Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy’s arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine).

For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world’s dominant hoarder of zero days. U.S. government agents paid top dollar--first thousands, and later millions of dollars-- to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence.

Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market.

Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down.

Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, TheNew York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.

Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity for The New York Times. She is the recipient of several journalism awards including best technology reporting by the Society of Business Editors and Writers. Her 2014 Times profile of security blogger Brian Krebs was optioned by Sony Pictures and a 2016 story of Chinese hackers in a welding shop server was optioned for a television series. Prior to joining the Times in 2011, Ms. Perlroth covered venture capital and start-ups for Forbes Magazine. Ms. Perlroth is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of Princeton University (B.A.) and Stanford University (M.A.).