Today’s the day.

More than 20 years in the writing, my book #WeAreAllTargets is published in the USA & Canada by @HachetteUS.

In this thread, I’ll share a few things I learned about the reality of cyberwar, its weird & wonderful origins… & why it’s not what we think. My involvement was an accident. In 2000, I was questioned by British military intelligence because NATO suspected me of spying for Serbia (I wasn’t) - because I had secret NATO Kosovo battle plans on my work computer.

MI5 came to my office.

You should have seen my boss’s face.

A funny thing about blind spots is that they persist.

Even when things come from them, we declare them weird, or freak occurrences, rather than revisit our thinking.

German’s equivalent ‘toter Winkel’ or ‘dead angle’ nails that utter impossibility of it being… inhabited. This leads our own minds into waters of deep strangeness.

Police on the scene at car accidents routinely note magical thinking in statements. Drivers recounting how the other car/pedestrian/cyclist ‘came out of nowhere’, leaving him powerless to react in time.

That’s the tell.

@IanDunt 100% that. I once had to get some copy out of him and it became clear during the dribbled excuses & telephonic Lorem Ipsum that ensued that month that he had no object permanence. The brain area that helps most of us think about absent, potential or future things is… missing. @IanDunt He would lie, and being told he was on speaker with me and my editor, would lie again, in the same way as a toddler will lie about not having the biscuit it has in its hand at that very moment. It was like trying to coach custard towards GCSE Maths.

Sad thought this morning. One of the last things I did in London before the first lockdown was watch Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Leopoldstadt’ at the theatre.

The play was funny, sad, very good; it drifted a little in parts, but you always knew. These people are heading into darkness. Then there was the end.

The characters from earlier scenes, all on stage, as if in a photo. A roll-call as someone remembered them, and what became of them. The repetition of ‘Auschwitz’. Like a drumbeat. It was devastating. And the lights went out.