{"id":2432,"date":"2014-08-13T07:24:16","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T11:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2432"},"modified":"2014-09-02T05:53:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T09:53:07","slug":"the-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2432","title":{"rendered":"*** The Director"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robin<\/a>

“Robin Hood’s Band Made Merry by Killing the King’s Deer” (photo: c1.staticflickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

By David Ignatius (narrated by George Guidall). This thriller is set in the bowels of the nation\u2019s national security apparatus, at the time a new CIA director is appointed who is not a Beltway insider, but plucked from the corporate world. The new director, Graham Weber, is pitted against the puppeteers of competing security agencies and (this is not a spoiler) a computer wizard inside the Agency who has gone rogue, James Morris.<\/p>\n

How much readers like the book seems to depend on how excited they were by the electronic shenanigans of Morris, though there didn\u2019t seem to be a lot new there\u2014not for readers of Wired<\/em>, anyway. Still, while Morris and his network were entertaining, the old-school-tie boys on Weber\u2019s other flank were palpably less convincing. The women in the story fell into their respective stereotypes. A flimsy seduction scene is best ignored.<\/p>\n

But the bigger problem\u2014and where this book diverges from the best writing of, say, Neal Stephenson\u2014is that, while it has the geeky stuff down, it has no social science sense. \u201cRob from the banks of the rich countries and give to the poor ones?\u201d Really? Which poor countries would that be? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Myanmar? Uganda? Many of the world\u2019s poorest countries stay that way because the leadership class steals everything they can get their hands on. Sending them \u201cfree\u201d cash makes no sense. I didn\u2019t want to read a lecture on political science and economics, but needed some acknowledgement that such sophisticated technologists thought deeper than a Robin Hood fantasy. Unfortunately, this gap undercuts their whole motivation for the crime.<\/p>\n

If you can ignore that problem, and if you, like me, worry about our growing electronic vulnerabilities, you may like this book! And, you’ll notice the similarities in supposed high-mindedness between Morris and real-life cyber-spy Ed Snowden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h6>\n