Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan
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Authors
Gioe, David V.
Issue Date
2017
Type
Other
Language
Keywords
Cyber Warfare
Alternative Title
Abstract
Writing a history of anything without clear or accepted chronological boundaries, such as cyber war, is a challenging undertaking. Even with a definite start and stop points, Winston Churchill still felt that he needed six enormous volumes, eight years, and a team of contributing authors to tell his history of the easily demarcated Second World War. British wartime code breaker turned Cambridge historian, F.H. “Harry” Hinsley, in some respects had a more modest task than Churchill—to write a history of World War II examining only the intelligence aspect. Like Churchill, however, Professor Hinsley found that he required several research and writing assistants, many years of work, and four volumes to tell his history of World War II secrets, not to mention the benefit of over a quarter century of time—much-needed hindsight and cooling off of intelligence sources and methods—to place intelligence and code-breaking operations into their wartime context. Even Hinsley’s abridged version of British Intelligence in the Second World War (1993) spanned a dense 628 pages. Thus, broad histories are exceptionally challenging to write—much more so in their own time—and compounded by the fact that any “secret history” is bound to be a historiographical challenge for even the most veteran researchers.
Description
Citation
Gioe, David V. "Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan". Cyber Defense Review, 2017.
Publisher
Cyber Defense Review