Book Review: "Stealth War"
"Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept" by Robert Spaulding is an eye opening book regarding The Communist Party of China's blatant economic espionage throughout the first two decades of the 21st century. Robert Spaulding was a brigadier general in the US Airforce as well as being the chief China strategist within the Pentegon. He has also spent considerable amounts of time in China and speaks the language, so I like to think that his perspective is understanding and balanced in that regard. That said, this is a very important book as it lays out in multiple ways how The Communist Party of China (CPC) has been conducting an economic war against the United State through multiple means for several years now. I listened to the book on Amazon for over 7 hours (256 pages) at ~$17, which felt short for an audiobook, but also long enough to get its point across. Ultimately, I give the book 7 out of 10 stars, for accurately capturing and describing the very real cyber war that has been happening for the last decade. This is a phenomenon that few have been able to articulate properly, despite the mountains of evidence attributing China to commercial espionage via hacking and other means. Robert pontificates about how the US military has had a difficult time responding to this activity, because it's not traditional military action so they have little recourse to react. I do wish there were more examples, perhaps of the different Chinese actors or APT groups, or even more on how they strategically target verticals within their 5 year plan. It's kind of funny, but the term APT was originally coined to discus "the China problem" across multiple companies without naming them outright every time. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favor and be familiar with the original APT-1 report. The CPC also actively hacks many other companies through different arms of the PLA, I know from first hand experience from my time at Mandiant and have seen many of these intrusions with my own eyes. The following are the chapters of the book so you can see what it covers:
Chapter 1: Unrestricted Warfare
Chapter 2: How We Got Here
Chapter 3: Economy
Chapter 4: The Military Crisis
Chapter 5: the Digital Battlefield
Chapter 6: Modern Warefare 5.0: The 5G Future
Chapter 7: Politics and Diplomacy
Chapter 8: Stealing Intellectual Property
Chapter 9: World Domination via infrastructure
Chapter 10: Sino Solutions: How To Combat and Stop China's Stealth War
Chapter 11: Beating China at its Own Game
"Stealth War" talks about how several US businesses have been lured to China for the promise of access to the millions of new customers, but China fleeces most every company that gets involved over there, counterfeiting their products and reselling them to their own market. China can incubate companies in its own local economy until they are big enough compete on a global stage, or it can collapse them and repurpose the resources at the government's whim, with little care for any investors. The idea that economic prosperity brings on democracy is unfortunately an antiquated idea and a fallacy that plays into China's long term plans. Spaulding lays out how investing in a communist economy is not like investing in a democratic-capitalist company, as the government is really in charge of the resources, not independent actors with their own best interests in mind. The book talks about various CPC documents such as Unrestricted Warfar, written by two Chinese nationals in the PLA, which covers using hacking and other economic strategies to dominate a technically advanced opponent. The book discuses China's extensive infrastructure plans such as the building out of their 5G networks, where they've claimed to have built the largest 5G network to date in their country. One of Robert's main points is centered on 5G networks, with regards to many of the components for 5G networks are being produced in China and he cautions not to let foreign powers influence major communications networks or key component production within our own country. Robert also covers China building out textiles, roads, and more infra in Africa, including providing many cellphones to the people. If this sounds altruistic it's actually a plan to move it's industry of basic production to another county while also testing out it's new technologies. The end goal is a society of monitoring and censorship, it's a coercive plan to become a world power at the expense of countries resources. Below you can listen to an amazing interview with Robert on the The Jordan Harbringer Show, regarding his book and the takeaways within:
