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Staying Ahead of Vlad-Trump Meeting

by John on 07/07/2017

TrumpPutinmeetSome thoughts and suggestions as Putin and Trump meet at the G-20 Summit.

Here are two books worth reading.

The first is The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen.

It was written five years ago but it is still relevant today.

Gessen profiles Putin’s career as a thug who caught on with the KGB before the Soviet Union collapsed and how he engineered power to take advantage of Russia giving away the state to oligarchs by a drunken Boris Yeltsin.

Man without a faceIt would read like a rags to riches story if not for Putin running Russia like a crime syndicate to attain excessive wealth.

Gessen shows us how Putin is a dictator trying to keep Russia afloat.  Obama was right: Russia is a regional power.

But its meddling and hacking are still dangerous – which leads to a second book.

Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap by Graham Allison.

This book solidifies the theory that the real players in the world are China and the US.  Allison offers a number of dangerous scenarios that could inadvertently lead to a major war book cover Destined for Warbetween the US and China.  So clearly you realize that Russia is not a major player.

But Russia could be another North Korea, although behind the scenes, sparking a Sino-American war by using their hacking abilities to antagonize one side against the other.

If anything, while you watch this meeting of global leaders and you read these books, you realize how much the US needs to “up” its cyber security.

 

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