Insider X by Dave Buschi

It's called Facility 67096. In China. The best, brightest, fluent in both book and slang English, as well as being the most Internet savvy are recruited by the People's Liberation Army. Here, they digitally manipulate the West by producing some of the most contrived 'comments' for the social media craze. The idea being that the next war, a digital war, can begin when the West goes into an upheaval over what everyone else is thinking (via these contrived comments) inserted surreptitiously to manipulate retail sales, services, social structure, and, importantly, politics. 

These recruits are given luxury housing, high salaries, access to trendy fashion, gourmet food in exchange for 12h days making up the most outlandish stuff to insert into social media. Marks (muscle) and Lip (geek) lead a small team trying to learn more about what goes on inside this manicured compound. What they learn leads them to set up a near apocalyptic meltdown of the Facility, weakening China's impending war effort. 

I had a number of issues with this book. First, Buschi gives the reader a really long and detailed account of just what is needed to screw up the minds of the Internet-obsessed West. Second, Marks and Lip (who were sort of a mismatched Mutt and Jeff in Buschi's Proportionate Response) are little more than a sidelight to all the goings on inside the Facility. Third, this book could've been cut by well over half and inserted into some Internet Computing magazine providing a cautionary tale about how social media can be (and is) manipulated; but it probably wouldn’t have the same exposure. But seriously, do you reeeeeeeally believe all those reviews or comments (or even waste your time) at the bottom of some many websites? If anything, this book should make the reader either mad that such manipulation is going on or angry that what was essentially (to me at least) a short story turned into a droning lecture. After reading Proportionate Response (not a bad effort, but for reasons beyond my grasp, is our 3^rd most read review), I thought more Marks/Lip might be pretty entertaining. Not any more.

East Coast Don

Proportionate Response by Dave Buschi

Three guys used to work for the clandestine unit of the NSA: Marks (muscle), Johnny Two-Cakes (cyber crime) and Lip (languages, hacking). When they leave the NSA, Two-cakes heads for Costa Rica and ends up consulting for the off shore gaming business. Marks and Lip start their own contract security business and despite being a modern day version of Mutt/Jeff, Laurel/Hardy, or even Abbott/Costello, these guys can handle anything from NVGs and 50 caliber sniper rifles to virus laden thumb drives and server farms.

Johnny has disappeared. Someone is now after Two-cakes' wife and Johnny has left bread crumbs for  Marks and Lip. There's a shootout at a Starbucks, Johnny's house blows up, and some clues lead to a human trafficking ring of Russians. The boys find a liar and despite 15-2 odds, they manage to get their plan to work out and rescue a bunch of kids. A clue or two leads to who is pulling their strings - the man in the white mask whose email addresses all have the number '487' in it.

Now Lip is a serious hacker and traces emails back to China and China is where they head. And what they find out is damn frightening because it sounds so possible. The China Politburo, using China Telecom, has been promoting intellectual theft from everywhere as domestic policy. Ever wonder how they have so much money? One way is that they manipulate the various stock markets to a sell off so they can buy low, then sell high when the stock returns. The profits are used to 'invest' in other countries. One of these days, "we are going to wake up and find ourselves flat broke, buck naked, jobs gone, livelihoods stolen, and wonder what the hell happened." Dang, that's going on right now!

China does have one serious problem. They've expanded and built up so much, and they've educated millions without much possibility of a real future. What's the point of new intellectual property when it's already out there, ready to be stolen? Millions of IT grads are out there unable to get a job in IT and they are pissed. So when the 'revolution' finally does start (with a little help from Marks and Lip), it won't be led by rebels with weapons, it'll be by nerds with their laptops.

This is the 2nd Buschi novel I've read. Back Door Man was about dissing the wrong man in an attempt to crash the global financial markets. This has a broad international sweep, too and Buschi tells of numerous instances how and when the Chinese managed to route something like 80% of the internet traffic (and all that DATA) for an hour into China. His details descriptions of internet traffic, hacking protocols, servers, super computers, and more, while hardly the stuff of riveting suspense, are spot on within the development of the plot. Proportionate Response speeds right along just like Back Door Man. A really quick weekend read. Bushi really can tie suspense and action with networks, back doors, StuxNet, et al. Computing and action is a deadly combination in the skilled hands of Buschi. Let's hope this is the start of a continuing series of books following Marks and Lip.

East Coast Don

p.s. an interesting side note: one of the characters in the trafficking subplot is named Jiri Dvorak. Same name as FIFA's Chief Medical Officer whom I've worked for and with for a number of years. First time I've seen the name of someone I know applied in a book. The character met a particularly gruesome demise at the hands of Marks and Lip.

Back Door Man by Dave Buschi

James Kolinsky. Scholarship wrestler. Math major. A techie. Busted out of a number of failed startups. Specialist is digital security. Gets married (to a woman estranged from her oil roughneck father). Fathers two little girls. Accepts a job at CompTec. A company that backs up information in massive server farms. The biggest and best in the business. And James is at the center of its security. Not the head dog. A doer. A drone. Reliable. 10 years. Raleigh, North Carolina.

Five big shots: the COO of CompTec, a Russian mobster, a Chinese warlord, a British financier, a Zurich banker. They work up a scheme. Crash the financial networks for 24 hours, during which they transfer as much money as they can. Estimates are upwards of $60 billion each. To be successful, they need to find a patsy. A nobody who they can plant bread crumbs that will lead investigators on a trail to the patsy. A disgruntled employee whose revenge against the company is to crash the financial network. Has to have the technical savvy for the trail to be believable.

James Kolinsky.

Overnight, credit cards, ATMs, most bank computers all seize up. The only money you have is what’s in your pocket. And the public freaks all over the planet. Kolinsky is in a panic when he checks his balance online and finds that the process of draining his accounts has started. Cell phones are jammed. He has to get home, but a subordinate says the problem may have originated in their own server farm.

Ah, but his co-worker is one of ‘them’ and getting him into the server farm is a ruse. While trying to trace the problem, Kolinsky manages to trace the information flow and starts to form some suspicions.

Bad guys invade Kolinsky’s home, taking his wife and children hostage. Her father, trying to make good with his daughter, wants to make sure they are OK and drives up unannounced.

The bad guys soon learn . . . Kolinsky may be a drone, but he can get a bit of an attitude when his family is threatened. He’s seen the digital trail leading to the 5 guys driving this havoc. So he sends them a little gift; a simple virus. Then he’s off to get to his family.

Think I came across this title from Goodreads.com. A little bit of Hitchcock’s wrong man theme, a little bit of Die Hard. A whole lot of detail about cyber-crime, hackers, and digital storage. Despite how dull that might sound, Buschi makes it cook. An amazingly fast read that was consistently 4 of 5 stars on other review sites. This was a story of a single day, and what a day it was.  Kindled his next book and I can’t wait to get at it, and it's rated even higher. A very worthy diversion for those needing a diversion. Trust me.

East Coast Don