Hi All,

It’s always a sober day in the Gear household when scenarios we predicted in our books show up on the morning news, as has been the case over the past few days with the Russian cyberattacks that shut down Ukrainian banks.

When we were writing DISSOLUTION and FOURTH QUADRANT, we knew it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the lines of people crowding in front of Ukrainian ATMSs, desperate to take out money before their accounts read zero and their money is gone. Lauren Davis in FOURTH QUADRANT has to watch the same scene take place after the bank she works for suffers a cyberattack. Is America ready for this?

Six or seven years ago when we were working on the original concept for the Wyoming Chronicles series, we had a chance to chat with our wonderful congressional representative, Mike Enzi, about America’s ability to protect our banking system from a cyberattack. He said simply that America was way behind on cybersecurity…and we found those words terrifying.

Given our backgrounds in the collapse of world cultures across thousands of years, we had to write the Wyoming Chronicles series. The problem at the time–and now it’s even more relevant–was that America was so far behind Russia and China, it was clear we were vulnerable.

The question now is whether or not America has lost the opportunity to protect itself.

What do you think?

Thanks.

Mike and Kathy