Has a lot of good reviews. I was sort of *eh* about the book even though it was written by a famous admiral and a marine infantry officer. Nothing wrong with the prose…I just couldn’t buy some of the scenario assumption. The starting incident is standard Tonkin Gulf stuff, so fair enough. Some sort of Chinese cyberweapon directed at the US military in a war is an absolute given. A cyberweapon that results in 2 dozen US warships lost for zero Chinese losses? Hmm.

Things eventually go nuclear. Again, that isn’t really far fetched if China has invaded Taiwan and taken out power etc to most of the US. We use tactical nukes, but on strategic targets. I’m not sure that is even remotely containable. We use dumbed down F/A18 fighters (with almost all the avionics removed because CYBERWARFARE LOL) to deliver the nukes. JFC Tom Clancy had LA class subs with Tomahawk missiles doing this stuff back in 1986. We don’t have Tomahawks or their hypersonic replacement in 2034??? Along the way San Diego and Galveston get nuked by Chinese drones in retaliation for our nuke on one of their naval ports. (I think the scenario would end exactly right here because I don’t see any way we don’t go to strategic weapons at that point)

Somehow India now has a massive blue water naval capability and sinks the SOOPER CHINA CARRIER we can’t seem to find or sink, and then starts shooting down our planes to keep us from blowing up lots of China. Shanghai and 30 million people still get fireballed into radioactive ashes. And then…it all stops because India sez so?

Huh???

50 million people dead on both sides on India just says STOP OR ELSE!

Or else what?

The authors gloss over US public stuff to a shocking degree. The only hint of antipathy to Chinese Americans or Chinese immigrants is a near deserted Chinese sit down restaurant in DC. With two mid range US cities turned to ashes, I can well imagine there would be organized 1920 Tulsa style pogroms and mass shootings. I can also imagine LE not doing much to stop it.

As a final coda, a major Chinese naval character is executed and his wife and daughter flee here. I almost literally LOL’ed that one. Seriously? We would allow the wife and daughter of a major architect of a nuclear war that killed millions of Americans to just come on over sure why not?

So, yeah.