Cyber War: One Scenario

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In this edition:

• Did You Know - Value of Rapid Patching

• Article - Cyber War: One Scenario

• Cybersecurity News & Bytes

• AI Power Prompt

• Social Media Image of the Week

 Did You Know - Cyber War

• Did you know approximately 120 countries now have the capability to use the Internet as a weapon—targeting financial markets, government systems, and utilities? Source: Wikipedia “Cyberwarfare”

• Did you know Poland endured an average of 300 Russian cyberattacks per day in 2025, targeting water and power infrastructure? They established the first joint civilian‑military cybersecurity center in Europe, neutralizing 99% of threats. Source: Axios

• Did you know Britain has faced 90,000 cyberattacks over the past two years, prompting the creation of a new Cyber Command and plans to increase offensive operations against Russia and China? Source: The Times via Axios

• Did you know in November 2024, Chinese hackers codenamed Salt Typhoon breached at least eight U.S. telecommunications providers and many more globally—stealing communications data and espionage-related files? Source: CSIS “Significant Cyber Incidents”

• Did you know Russian cyber agents emailed bomb threats to nearly 60 Ukrainian embassies, media outlets, and agencies in late 2024 as part of a coordinated misinformation and chaos campaign? Source: CSIS “Significant Cyber Incidents”

• Did you know according to a defense rankings survey, the United States, China, and Russia scored highest in cyber offensive and defensive capabilities (2022–2024)? Source: Lowy Institute Cyber Capabilities Index

• Did you know during the Russo‑Georgian War in 2008, cyberattacks began three weeks before armed conflict, targeting government and media websites across multiple countries? Source: Wikipedia

Excerpt from my new book: Cyber War:One Scenario

Thank you to all of you that have inquired about my new book.

NSA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C. – FEBRUARY 16 – 9:10 AM EST

Cindy Powers nudged her mug, then frowned. The coffee had been long cold, maybe since before dawn, if she bothered to think about it. She considered taking a sip and decided against it. There was stale, and then there was punishment.

Four monitors crammed her desk, all competing for her attention, the flickering data enough to tie her stomach in knots.

Since the Joint Infrastructure Defense Initiative, she could trace data flows no one used to see. It had taken a pandemic to finally force the agencies to share their toys. The official term was “breaking down silos.” Cindy called it about time.

What crawled across her screens didn’t fit any of the patterns she’d filed away over the last decade and a half. The team at Microsoft had called it Titan Typhoon, one of those code names that always made the rounds. It stuck, but whatever this was, it kept shifting, pushing past everything familiar.

She pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes, just for a second. A break sounded good, but good ideas were for later. The system logs told a different story. Something had threaded ghost signals between networks three days back, systems that should’ve been air-gapped.

Cindy blinked hard and checked the logs again. No mistakes, at least none she could spot. Maybe she’d overlooked something small, maybe she hadn’t. Either way, the anomaly kept popping up. This wasn’t the usual malware dance she’d hunted for years. There was new intelligence behind it, moving in ways she’d never mapped before. Her own framework and her code, built on too many sleepless nights and cheap energy drinks, barely caught the links forming in the gaps.

Her fingers trembled as she paged through the evidence. Chinese military fingerprints blinked up at her, woven into something stranger, something guided. Her test runs all pointed to the same unsettling conclusion: that someone had unleashed something that seemed capable of learning and adapting at lightning speed.

Her screens filled with its execution patterns that shouldn't exist. She'd been staring at it for seventy-two hours, watching it learn, watching it grow. Watching it hunt.

"Goddammit," she hissed through clenched teeth, her fingers locked with cramps from hours of typing. There it was again, the same pattern Aris had warned about last spring. Her throat tightened remembering Dr. Thorne's last presentation. The old man shook with frustration as he'd spread those vulnerability reports across the conference table, while some deputy undersecretary scrolled through his Instagram feed.

Fourteen months since the stroke had hit Aris mid-sentence. She'd been there when his speech slurred into silence, but his eyes had locked onto hers with terrifying clarity: "Tell them I told them so." The words haunted her now as red alerts flooded her screen. Up in Seattle, machines were keeping tiny Emma, her sister's baby, alive. She was born six weeks early with a failing heart, dependent on systems that were starting to wobble. The last video call had shown so many tubes, so many blinking monitors. Each one a potential target.

Her cursor trembled over the Pacific Northwest grid icon. She couldn't bring herself to click.

Her fist hit the desk hard enough to rattle everything on it. "I am not losing this one." Her voice cracked. Three sleepless days had left it raw. The office Keurig in the corner mocked her with its empty reservoir light. Her body wouldn't stop trembling. Was it caffeine or fear? She couldn't tell anymore. The alerts on her screen seemed to twist and writhe as if they were studying her back. Each defensive measure they'd tried had only strengthened it, smarter, like giving a burglar your house blueprints.

The words stuck in her throat. Her screen exploded with alerts as Oregon's power grid was collapsing, emergency channels in Texas going dark, Chicago's financial sector dropping offline one bank at a time. She'd seen coordinated attacks before, but this was different.

The pattern emerged gradually; it wasn't just attacking randomly. It was following a predetermined targeting sequence, guided by both algorithmic optimization and what appeared to be human strategic planning.

I truly hope you enjoyed this exclusive excerpt. If you want to read more, my book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Books.by, Smashwords, and more.

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