Fried Chips
Modern civilisation rests on machinery most people never see. Electricity travels through transformers that cannot be replaced overnight. Hospitals depend on networks whose failure can delay treatment. Banking, transport, communications and food distribution rely on systems so closely connected that a local interruption can become a national emergency. Their convenience has become familiar; their fragility remains poorly understood.
In Fried Chips: EMPS, Cyber Sabotage, and the War on Technology, John Shenton examines what happens when these dependencies are exploited. Electromagnetic pulses, malicious software, compromised supply chains and physical attacks on infrastructure offer different routes to the same pressure point: a society’s ability to keep functioning. The battlefield may be a substation, a semiconductor factory, an undersea cable or an administrator’s account. The consequences reach beyond the equipment first damaged.
Drawing on documented incidents, technical research and official assessments, Shenton distinguishes demonstrated threats from speculation and political alarm. He considers state espionage, criminal extortion, industrial vulnerability, artificial intelligence and the approaching demands of post-quantum security. Throughout, he asks practical questions that declarations often leave unanswered. Who can make decisions when communications fail? What can still operate without its usual network? Where will replacement equipment come from, and how long will recovery take?
The book follows those questions into civilian life, where disruption means missed appointments, interrupted water supplies, inaccessible savings and businesses unable to trade. It examines the months or years that specialised transformers and other essential equipment may take to procure, and the difficult choices facing institutions during prolonged interruption. It also considers how governments, alliances and businesses can strengthen resilience without confusing surveillance, expenditure or reassuring language with effective protection.
Fried Chips argues that technological independence begins with understanding dependence. It requires repair capacity, reliable records, trained people, credible alternatives and institutions willing to acknowledge their limits. These are material conditions of national freedom, not merely technical concerns.
Written in plain, sceptical prose, this is a book about the hidden foundations of everyday security, and the price of neglecting them. The question is whether societies can preserve the capacity to act when the systems they trust cease to answer their demands.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMQ1T1SV
