2034, by Ackerman and Stavrides, looks like a story of future war intended to influence current policy. It could have been more plausible, because Stavrides is a retired US Navy Admiral. But its plot relies on two massive technological surprises, the first one giving the Chinese the ability to remotely disable and re-enable at will almost anything including a digital computer, for example the electricity system of the East Coast of the United States, and the flight control systems of an F-35 (in flight). The Chinese have a convoluted plan in which they make use of quite minor demonstrations of this ability, leaving me wondering for a while what the rational US response to fairly small indications of great superiority would be. In fact, correct play for the Chinese in this situation would be to launch a decapitating strike without warning, lest the US find a counter, in which case the US response is academic. The American response in the book involves an F/A-18 stripped of all susceptible equipment. Since the F/A-18 in fact includes a quadruply redundant fly by wire system and a 1553 digital bus - which typically forms the electronic spinal column of systems built around it - I doubt if this plan could fly. For some reason, the story ends with India as Deus Ex Machina via the second technological surprise, whose strategic potency is as unclear to me as its place in the plot.

This was a chance to say something worthwhile about the great question of our age - whether democracies can continue to outpace autocracies. "The Return of Great Power Rivalry", by Kroenig, does a much better job of talking about this, and is also more optimistic. Since it does not claim to be fiction, I guess it loses by default in this newsgroup, but I still prefer it to 2034. This suggests that it really does help to be a nice place to live, because foreign experts will then come to work for you. It also points out that autocracies need to spend roughly the equivalent of their budget for their army on internal security, while democracies spend only a fraction of this on police. It covers in passing a disadvantage of autocracies I first heard under the name of "Red and Expert" - If sufficient loyalty and ideological purity to make somebody acceptably employable cannot be taken for granted, your best experts will be the best of a much smaller pool of people than those of a democracy of comparable size.

On Sat, 18 Jun 2022 22:20:08 -0700, Andrew McDowell wrote:

> 2034, by Ackerman and Stavrides, looks like a story of future war
> intended to influence current policy. It could have been more plausible,

Since evidently you have purchased and read the novel, would
you kindly reveal the nature of India's deus ex machina so we
can continue the discussion? Everything I've been able to find
online about this book smells /teaser/. Even the Wikipedia
page for Ackerman obviously was written by a publicity agent.

On Sunday, June 19, 2022 at 8:34:56 AM UTC+1, Charles Packer wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jun 2022 22:20:08 -0700, Andrew McDowell wrote:
>
> > 2034, by Ackerman and Stavrides, looks like a story of future war
> > intended to influence current policy. It could have been more plausible,
> Since evidently you have purchased and read the novel, would
> you kindly reveal the nature of India's deus ex machina so we
> can continue the discussion? Everything I've been able to find
> online about this book smells /teaser/. Even the Wikipedia
> page for Ackerman obviously was written by a publicity agent.

(I didn't want to spoil both ideas from the book, but I don't intend to tease a book that may not be the best possible investment for your time and money, so here are some quotes from near the end of the book).

These are periscope photos from one of our upgraded Kalvari-class diesel electric submarines. Their modified propulsion system affords them an essentially unlimited range, equal to any of your nuclear submarines. We've used one to sink the Zheng He....

If your government takes any retaliatory action for Galveston or San Diego, it won't be a Chinese shipp that we sink next but an American one....

If accurate, it meant that dozens of Indian warships had infiltrated into the South China Sea undetected, representing a gross underestimation of India's stealth-cloaking and cyber capability by his own country....