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This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

The Cyberweapons Arms Race

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This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

By: Nicole Perlroth
Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
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Bloomsbury presents This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth, read by Allyson Ryan.

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, 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.©2021 Nicole Perlroth (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Freedom & Security Politics & Government Espionage National Security Computer Security Russia Cyber Warfare Imperial Japan Hacking
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Critic reviews

Part John le Carré and more parts Michael Crichton ... spellbinding.
An intricately detailed, deeply sourced and reported history.
Vivid and provocative.
Told in an enthrallingly cinematic style . . . a stark, necessary, thoroughly reported reminder that no matter how strong the safe is, there’ll always be someone who can come along and crack it.
Possibly the most important book of the year . . . Perlroth’s precise, lucid, and compelling presentation of mind-blowing disclosures about the underground arms race a must-read exposé.
An engaging and troubling account of ‘zero-day exploits’ . . . This secretive market is difficult to penetrate, but Ms. Perlroth has dug deeper than most and chronicles her efforts wittily.
[Perlroth] has delivered a five-alarm page turner that weighs the possibility of cyber-cataclysm.
A masterful inside look at a highly profitable industry that was supposed to make us safer, but has ended up bringing us to the brink of the next world war.
Takes a complex subject that has been cloaked in techspeak and makes it dead real for the rest of us.
100% gripping. For anyone interested in cybersecurity, whether as student, policymaker, or citizen, it is well worth your read.
A rollicking fun trip, front to back, and an urgent call for action before our wired world spins out of our control.
A whirlwind global tour that introduces us to the crazy characters and bizarre stories behind the struggle to control the internet. It would be unbelievable if it wasn't all so very true.
The definitive history of cyberwarfare.
A must-read tale of cloak-and-dagger mercenary hackers, digital weapons of mass destruction and clandestine, ne'er-do-well government agencies. Perlroth's intrepid reporting shows why the consequences could be frightening.
Will keep you up at night, both unable to stop reading, and terrified for what the future holds.
Nicole Perlroth tells a highly technical, gripping story as if over a beer at your favorite local dive bar. A page-turner.
[A] wonderfully readable new book. Underlying everything Perlroth writes is the question of ethics: What is the right thing to do? Too many of the people she describes never seemed to think about that; their goals were short-term or selfish or both. A rip-roaring story of hackers and bug-sellers and spies that also looks at the deeper questions.
The murky world of zero-day sales has remained in the shadows for decades, with few in the trade willing to talk about this critical topic. Nicole Perlroth has done a great job tracing the origin stories, coaxing practitioners into telling their fascinating tales, and explaining why it all matters.
From one of the literati, a compelling tale of the digerati: Nicole Perlroth puts arresting faces on the clandestine government-sponsored elites using 1s and 0s to protect us or menace us—and profit.
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