A World On The Brink
On Taiwan, China, Chips, and "Cold War II"
Welcome back to my all-too-occasional email newsletter. This spring I really truly hope to turn this into a more regular publication, especially since the next six weeks have a lot of exciting work to come for me.
Today’s the publication day for WORLD ON THE BRINK, a book I worked on with cybersecurity pioneer and geopolitical strategist Dmitri Alperovitch. In my national security and cyber life, I’ve known Dmitri for over a decade and followed him as he built CrowdStrike, arguably the nation’s top cybersecurity firm, and was on the front lines of many of the nation’s biggest cyber incidents—including, notably, China’s “Operation Aurora” attack on Google in June and the Russian hack of the DNC in 2016.
Two years ago, he was one of the first—if not the first—geopolitical experts to warn, loudly and publicly, that Russia was actually going to invade Ukraine. A few months later, we had breakfast and he was like, “I want to write a book about how the America’s next showdown is going to be over Taiwan and how computer chips are the currency to block a Chinese takeover of Taiwan.” I’m a firm believer that almost all “idea books” should really just be magazine article, and I replied, “That sounds like a great 6,000-word article for The Atlantic.” But Dmitri was insistent he had a bigger argument—and, not just an argument, but a series of suggestions and proposals for actual solutions, an honest-to-goodness, actionable road map for avoiding a war with China in the next decade. We kept talking, and, he did in fact have not just a nice magazine article but a full book.
Today, here’s the result of that initial breakfast:
Every book I’ve written surprises me in unexpected ways and working on this was no exception—I learned a fascinating amount about Chinese politics, the nuts and bolts of the US defense industry, and Taiwan’s history. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s never actually belonged to China!) If you’re interested in geopolitics, I hope you’ll pick this up. A big part of the book is looking at the relative strengths of the US, China, and Russia—a country Dmitri, born and raised in Moscow, knows well—and how the US has slipped into what Dmitri calls “Cold War II.” (Why Cold War II and not Cold War 2.0? Read the book!)
Kirkus Reviews gave WORLD ON THE BRINK a starred review and calls the book: “A thorough investigation of 'America’s top foreign policy challenge'...Deeply insightful advice for the coming decades.”
One of the big breakout book hits last year was Chris Miller’s CHIP WAR, about the geopolitical history of semiconductor chips, and I think of this book in some ways as the natural follow-on to that—an argument for how chips will shape the next decade (an argument Dmitri outlined in an excerpt yesterday in the Washington Post) and the leverage the US should be using to keep China was mastering that and other critical technologies. We were really excited that Miller himself was willing to blurb Dmitri’s book, so don’t just have to take my word for the book’s interest: “World on the Brink is a clear-eyed analysis of Cold War II and a game plan for winning it. Provocative and insightful, this is essential reading for understanding the American-made world order and the threats it faces.”
If you’d like to listen some more about it, here’s a podcast I did with Dmitri about the book that contains an excerpt from the audiobook and the prologue where we consider exactly—and I mean exactly—how and when China might launch an invasion of Taiwan. Dmitri journeyed to Taiwan last year, interviewed a ton of experts, and actually walked the terrain himself to imagine how the invasion might unfold.
Speaking of podcasts—and I’ll write more about this next week—in other recent work, if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, we’re halfway through the third season of my narrative history podcast LONG SHADOW. LONG SHADOW tries to answer the question each season “How did we get here?”
As you may remember, the first season tackled lingering questions from 9/11 and the second season examined and traced the rise of the American far-right. This spring, as we mark the 25th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School, we’ve devoted to exploring the season, is called “In Guns We Trust,” and we’re examining how guns became such a uniquely American problem—looking at the history of the Second Amendment and how a specific, carefully manufactured fear campaign has driven the explosive demand for guns across the country and created the epidemic of violence we live with today.
More soon on this—and more!
GMG