Attack Surface

Really interesting and unique novel (as is typical for Cory Doctorow, lol).

Preface/context: I've been an uber fan of Cory's for 15+ years. I feel I should mention this. I just checked and it seems I've read 7 of his books? I've seen 3 of his talks in-person, iirc. He's just great imo.

This book: So this is a novel following a young tech person, Masha, as she has, dare I say, a hacktivist's awakening. Many of Cory's books circle around hacktivism - that special, sparkly vortex of progressive activism and deep cut tech nerdery. This book is technically the third in a trilogy - after Little Brother (masterful) and Homeland (tbh I forgot most of this but prob enjoyed it decently well) - an alt present where a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge in SF leads to a huge gov crackdown and curtailing of individual liberties. In the first two books, we followed Marcus Yallow, a young hacker nerd type, as he taught us (the reader) about Tor and Linux and op sec. Wonderful. In those books, I vaguely remember, Masha was something of a femme fatale villain?

Anyway, now we hear it all from Masha's side and - honestly - it was so much more interesting? First, Cory leans into feminism and privilege HARD - he made several comments, via Masha, about the broey power structures of tech, about male/white privilege in general, and I just appreciated that so much. I have been reflecting on Cory lately (in a non-creepy way, I promise) and I've realized that he's actually quite a special unicorn/snowflake, because he's a DEEEEP cut nerd (he presents at Defcon, e.g.) but he's also extremely pro-social and actually very kind? I don't know him personally but I remember, at one talk, when a mentally ill person started to hog the microphone during the Q&A session. Cory navigated that interaction with so much compassion and grace (and respect!) that, well, I remember it many years later!

Anyway, all that to say, Cory's heart is made of gold and his books are unanimously Good Values. So what I found really interesting about THIS book, in particular, that it was kind of like the “Judas's journey”. That is, the journey from being a pragmatist, someone just trying to get by in the world, to an idealist, someone trying to change it. Masha goes through a real dark night of the soul - she's tugged relentlessly by her mental “compartments” between an idealist self and a just-wanna-pay-the-bills-and-stay-safe self. Her day job is supplying all the spy tech to all those shady gov contractors; all that awful surveillance tech, etc. She's paid handsomely and lives a weird, Green Zone-type life. This book is about that tension - between living your ideals and living for the paycheck (which, again, NO SHADE on that - as someone said, there is no ethical labor in a capitalist system). For anyone that does, indeed, have internal debates about the value of idealistic activism vs. pragmatic “be the change from the inside” - this was a great story about that. And, again, pretty compassionate from all angles! (Well, except for Masha's scary monster bosses - they were pretty bad.)

Oh, and for my future reference: the Mashapedia (not by me)