Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US–China Competition

Ahana Datta Fasel — former FT cyber chief, former senior official in the UK Cabinet Office and National Cyber Security Centre, and now an adviser to governments on geopolitical and technology risk — brings rare practitioner authority to the subject of cyber espionage as a tool of great power competition. The book examines how the entanglements between states, private hackers, and technology companies have created the unstable and increasingly dangerous cyber environment that characterises US-China strategic competition.

Full Stack Spies is particularly valuable for its account of the grey zone between state intelligence agencies and private sector actors — the contractors, patriotic hackers, and technology companies that states use to extend their cyber capabilities while maintaining deniability. This grey zone is directly relevant to the information environment: the same actors and the same operational structures that conduct cyber espionage are increasingly used for influence operations, and understanding how they are organised and motivated is essential for accurate attribution and effective response. One of the most operationally informed accounts of contemporary cyber espionage available.